Thomas I. Emerson

Template:TOCnestleft Prof. Thomas I. Emerson a legal theorist who was a major architect of civil liberties laws, died in March 1991 at the Yale Health Services Center in New Haven. He was 83 years old and lived North Haven, Conn.

He was survived by his wife, the former Ruth Calvin; a daughter, Joan, of San Francisco; two sons, Robert Emerson, of Los Angeles, and Dr. Luther Emerson of Brattleboro, Vt.

Early life

Professor Emerson was born in Passaic, N.J., and was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale before going on to its law school and becoming editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal.

Career

Professor Emerson, who taught at the Yale Law School for three decades, was a scholar whose career involved him in many of the great societal and political issues of the century.

He went to Washington with President Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933 and worked in the National Recovery Administration, on the National Labor Relations Board, on the Social Security Board and in the Attorney General's office.

In World War II he was deputy administrator for enforcement of the Office of Price Administration, general counsel for the Office of Economic Stabilization and general counsel of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Honored for Civil Liberties Work

He was named a professor of law at Yale in 1946 and in 1955 became the Lines Professor of Law. He retired in 1976. He was the author of several books, notably "The System of Freedom of Expression," published in 1970. It was regarded as a major treatise on free speech.

"Scottsboro boys"

As a young lawyer in 1931, fresh out of Yale, Emerson served on the defense team that successfully appealed the convictions of the "Scottsboro boys," nine black Alabama teen-agers sentenced to death after they were convicted of raping two white women. The case came to be regarded as the beginning of the civil rights era. Foreshadowed Roe v. Wade.

Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace

Thomas I. Emerson was a sponsor of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace which ran from March 25 - 27, 1949 in New York City. It was arranged by a Communist Party USA front organization known as the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. The conference was a follow-up to a similar gathering, the strongly anti-America, pro-Soviet World Congress of Intellectuals which was held in Poland, August 25 - 28, 1948.

NLG

Professor Emerson was president of the National Lawyers Guild in 1950 and 1951 and was the first recipient of the American Civil Liberties Union Medal of Liberty for his lifetime service in defense of civil liberties.

National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee

As of May 1964, Thomas I. Emerson Law Yale University, was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party USA front, National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Griswold v. Connecticut

In 1965, Professor Emerson successfully argued Griswold v. Connecticut before the United States Supreme Court, which overturned a state law banning the sale of contraceptives. The ruling established a right to privacy and foreshadowed the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

National Committee Against Repressive Legislation

Circa 1965, Thomas Emerson was listed as an Adviser on Constitutional Law for the Washington, D.C. Office of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation.

NB: NCARL did not exist in 1965. This is most likely a typo and the correct year would be 1975. NCARL was a successor to two previously identified and cited Communist Party USA (CPUSA) legal front, the original National Committee to Abolish HUAC (NCAHUAC), whose full title was the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee which changed its name in March 1969 to the National Committee to Abolish the House Internal Security Committee (NCAHISC). NCARL was formed as a successor when HCAHISC went out of existence in 1975 when HISC, itself was abolished by the Democrats in Congress.

Full details on the early history of NCAHUAC and NCAHISC can be found in the "15th Report Supplement on Un-American Activities in California - 1970", Report of the Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities, to the 1970 California Legislature, Sacramento, California." This report has complete lists of those who attended their 1967 and 1970 national conferences.

Additional swore testimony about the connections of NCARL and other CPUSA fronts in Chicago can be found in "The Nationwide Drive Against Law Enforcement Intelligence Operations", Part 2, Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws (SISS), Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Congress, 1st Session, July 14, 1975.

Emerson had been identified in sworn testimony before an investigating committee as a member of the Communist Party USA, (FULL CITATION NEEDED) by former CPUSA newspaper editor Louis Budenz in 1952/53. This investigating committee, if it was a state organization, was roughly entitled the "Rapp-Coudert Commission" or if it was a congressional committee, the House Committee on Education and Labor(?). This was a little known sworn oath identification of Emerson who (CHECK DETAILS) replied in a sworn affidavit that he was not a member of the CPUSA. Sworn affidavits hold less weight before a congressional committee than does sworn testimony because of the possible penalty of perjury accruing to anyone who lies under oath.

This was similar to the sworn identification of Corliss Lamont as footnoted in the New Mobe Staff Study New Mobe of April 1970, Ftnt 124: "Testimony of Louis Budenz in hearings, "Institute of Pacific Relations", Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 82nd Congress, 1st Session, Part 2, August 23, 1951, pp. 673-674. Lamont never admitted his CPUSA membership.

[The paragraph above is NOT to be used without further documentation by KW. It is an example of how obscure congressional and state investigation committees obtained sworn identifications of CPUSA members who had not been previously identified in congressional hearings for a number of reasons}

References

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