MONTCLAIR, N.J., September 20, 2003 (AP) --

Arthur Kinoy, a veteran civil rights lawyer who was involved in some of the 20th century's most celebrated cases, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 82.

Kinoy worked on the 1950s espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Other high-profile cases included the trial of eight anti-war activists charged with conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

He took on President Richard Nixon in 1972, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the use of the wiretaps was a violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. He won that case and four others he argued before the court.

For much of the 1950s and 1960s he worked on behalf of the civil rights movement in the American South. In 1964, he joined the faculty at Rutgers University Law School, where he taught until his retirement in 1991.