Charles A. Ash, a Cambridge rent control tenant, filed suit against the state attorney general last summer, charging that revocation of the rent control laws would violate the local autonomy of Cambridge, Boston and Brookline, the three communities with rent control laws.

Fried wrote the introduction to a brief supporting the state's position. In that introduction, he ridiculed the plaintiffs' argument that a referendum to kill rent control would violate local autonomy.

"It is a strange kind of ratchet that would require consent of the people of the Commonwealth as a whole before a locality may impose rent control, but then that would foreclose, in the name of local autonomy, that same general authority from thinking better of it and withdrawing the consent," Fried wrote in the April 29, 1994 brief.

Fried was apparently persuasive; the SJC voted unanimously to uphold the ballot question.

But tenant activists have not forgiven the outspoken law professor.

"What we saw was something much more intemperate and utterly inappropriate for someone who would serve on the court," Turk said, saying he was disturbed by Fried's opposition to rent control.

"From what he has said, we believe that he could not be impartial in adjudicating and interpreting [local] laws," Turk said. "His view of home rule is one that we think is very damaging to the powers of localities, and that extends far beyond rent control to the way in which the Commonwealth itself is constructed."

Fried's record has been unabashedly opposed to rent control. Along with writing the introduction to the brief submitted by lawyers representing the Greater Boston Real Estate Board in the constitutional challenge last summer, Fried authored two op-eds in the Boston Globe.

Fried yesterday declined to state his views on rent control, referring inquiries to his two published opinions.

"Cambridge and other communities can regulate rents only because the Legislature has specifically allowed them to," Fried wrote in an opinion printed July 21, 1994. "If the people of the state must grant that permission, they can take it away."

Fried said Cambridge politicians have abused rent control, which was originally designed as an emergency measure to help low-and moderate-income tenants.

"Rent control causes a deterioration in the housing stock and a lowering of property values that necessarily shifts a greater burden of state aid to other communities that manage their affairs in a less unusual way," Fried wrote.

The professor continued: "Cambridge is not only a sore thumb but also one whose infection may spread."

Rent Control Supporters

Turk said yesterday the two groups--the tenants union and the Save Our Communities Committee--fear Fried's conservative voice on the high court could bode badly for tenants in future constitutional battles with landlords and real estate interests.