Richard D. Friedman, the Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law, is an expert on evidence and U.S. Supreme Court history. He is the general editor of The New Wigmore, a multi-volume treatise on evidence. His textbook, The Elements of Evidence, is now in its third edition, and he is coauthor of Waltz, Park & Friedman's Evidence: Cases and Materials, now in its 11th edition. He has also written many law review articles and essays. In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the Supreme Court radically transformed the law governing the right of an accused to "be confronted with the witnesses against him" by adopting a "testimonial" approach, which Prof. Friedman had long advocated; he now maintains the Confrontation Blog (see link below) to comment on related issues and developments, and he has successfully argued two follow-up cases, Hammon v. Indiana and Briscoe v. Virginia, in the Supreme Court. Prof. Friedman earned a BA and a JD from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a DPhil in modern history from Oxford University. He clerked for Chief Judge Irving R. Kaufman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then practiced law in New York City. He joined the Law School faculty in 1988 from Cardozo Law School. He is a 2010 recipient of the Patriot Award from the Washtenaw County Bar Association.

See Professor Friedman's Confrontation Blog.