Ash, whose constitutional challenge failed last July, expressed dissatisfaction with Fried's possible nomination. "When it comes to rent control many people are past reason," Ash said. "That he was in the Reagan administrator and was solicitor general of the U.S. is really scary."

But it is those same anti-rent control sentiments which have endeared city landlords to Fried, whom they see as one of their own.

"It was great to have him as one of the authors of the Ash brief," said Jon R. Maddox, the Cambridge attorney who drafted Question 9. "It was a real honor to have someone of his stature on our side."

Maddox said Fried could play an instrumental role on the SJC, by emphasizing property rights "as part of the panoply of individual rights and liberties."

Other landlords agreed, accusing tenant groups of being unable to accept their defeat at the bench and in the voting booth.

"A special-interest group is basing its whole opposition to his nomination on a single-issue," said Salim E. Kabawat, treasurer of the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition, which spearheaded the Question 9 effort.

"The man should be judged by the totality of his work and the history of his career, not by a single issue which is irrelevant as it stands now," Kabawat added.

As for the charges that Fried would not be an impartial jurist, Kabawat pointed out that Justice Ruth Abrams lived in a rent-controlled unit for nearly a decade prior to rent control's elimination. SJC justices earn more than $90,000 annually.

And Fried said the constitutional issues in the Ash case were very clear and should have invited no dispute.

"The SJC...agreed with the attorney general and us in a unanimous opinion," Fried said yesterday. "There was a unanimous opinion saying there was no constitutional problem about the referendum."

Fried also defended his record as solicitor general. "I certainly didn't oppose the 1991 [civil rights] act at all," said the professor, whose work has focused on constitutional law and jurisprudence. "I testified in Senate testimony hearings and I testified in favor of some aspects and against others."

Fried was himself a rent-control landlord.

According to Cambridge Rent Control Board documents examined by The Crimson, Fried and his wife Anne S. Fried have owned a two-unit property on Irving Street since 1974, and have lived in the house since the end of the Reagan presidency in 1989.

The house was removed from rent-control status in 1990, after the Frieds moved in. The state Rent Control Act of 1976 exempted owner-occupied houses from rent restrictions.

A press release issued by the tenant groups earlier this month charges that "Fried violated Cambridge's rent control laws, overcharging his tenants by $6,500."