Thomas Emerson; Aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thomas Emerson, 83, a Roosevelt Administration aide who was an authority on the First Amendment. A Yale law professor, Emerson served on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Labor Relations Board and Office of Price Administration, the inflation watchdog during World War II. His opposition to abuse of government power and presidency of the National Lawyers Guild in 1950-51, during the McCarthy anti-communism era, led the FBI to keep a secret file on him. In 1965, Emerson won the first U.S. Supreme Court recognition of a right to privacy in the area of birth control. On Wednesday in New Haven, Conn., of complications from a stroke.