Archibald Cox

COX, ARCHIBALD

Archibald Cox, a former Harvard Law School professor, came to national attention in the 1950s as a federal labor official. From 1961 to 1965, he served as SOLICITOR GENERAL. He is best known for his appointment in 1973 as the Department of Justice’s special prosecutor in charge of investigating President RICHARD M. NIXON during the WATERGATE scandal. Cox’s tenacious pursuit of Nixon’s secret tape recordings precipitated a constitutional crisis, led to Cox’s firing, and ultimately set the stage for
Nixon’s resignation from office in 1974.
Born on May 17, 1912, in Plainfield, New
Jersey, Cox was one of six children of Archibald
Cox and Francis Bruen Cox. He studied Ameri-
can history and economics before entering Har-
vard Law School, from which he graduated
magna cum laude in 1937. After serving a law
clerkship for the celebrated federal appellate
judge LEARNED HAND, Cox entered private prac-
tice. In 1946, he became a full professor of law at
Harvard. He held various federal positions in
the area of LABOR LAW during the 1940s and
1950s, including that of head of the Korean
War–era Wage Stabilization Board following an
appointment in 1952 by President HARRY S.
TRUMAN. Throughout those decades, he also
arbitrated national labor disputes.

By the 1960s, Cox had established a reputa-
tion as a specialist in labor law. President JOHN F.
KENNEDY sought him out as a campaign adviser
in the 1960 election. After winning office, the
president rewarded Cox by appointing him U.S.
solicitor general, the attorney who argues gov-
ernment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cox held the post until 1965, and then returned to teaching law. He remained a highly soughtafter
negotiator and mediator. He was chosen by
the New York City school system to help settle a
teacher strike in 1967, and by Columbia University
to investigate riots on its campus in 1968.He
served as a special investigator for the Massachusetts
state legislature in 1972.

For Cox, the pivotal appointment came in
May 1973, when attorney general designate
ELLIOT RICHARDSON appointed him to investigate
President Nixon’s role in the Watergate
affair. The scandal had been simmering since the
arrest, in June 1972, of five Republican political
operatives for breaking into the Democratic
party’s national headquarters in the Watergate
office complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon
denied any involvement. But after evidence suggested
a connection to White House aides, he
promised to appoint a special prosecutor to
investigate. When Cox took the appointment,
Watergate was chiefly an embarrassment to
Nixon; partly through Cox’s efforts, it would
become Nixon’s undoing.

Since 1971, the president had been surreptitiously
recording conversations in the White
House, and Cox believed that the tapes contained
key evidence. Cox put pressure on Nixon
to release the recordings. Nixon refused, claiming
that he had a constitutional right to keep
presidential documents confidential. Cox
warned that the refusal would precipitate a constitutional
crisis. The Senate Select Committee
on Presidential Campaign Activities was also
conducting an investigation and was then holding
public hearings. The two investigations
resulted in a lawsuit that sought to force Nixon
to release the tapes, and U.S. district court judge
John J. Sirica ultimately ordered the president to
do so. The president stonewalled.
By October 1973,Nixon had had enough. He
wanted Cox gone. But rather than compromise the integrity of the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE by firing the special prosecutor, Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resigned. Nixon ultimately found someone who was willing to do the job. He promoted Solicitor General ROBERT H. BORK to acting attorney general, and Bork fired Cox. Cox told the press, “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately
the American people to decide.”

The public uproar following Cox’s firing—
including 3 million messages of protest sent to
Congress—further destabilized the president,
who was increasingly viewed as covering up his
role in Watergate. Resolutions urging IMPEACHMENT
were quickly introduced in the House of
Representatives. Nine months later, the U.S.
Supreme Court, in UNITED STATES V. NIXON,
418 U.S. 683, 94 S. Ct. 3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039
(1974), ordered Nixon to surrender materials
that he had withheld from the Senate. On
August 9, 1974, with impeachment almost certain,
he resigned from office.

Cox returned to teaching at Harvard in
1976, pronouncing himself satisfied with the
outcome of the Watergate affair. He remained at
Harvard until 1984 and then served as a visiting
professor of law at Boston University from 1984
to 1996. In his later years, he has advocated
reform of campaign finance laws, delivering several
speeches about the ethics of campaign
financing in presidential elections. In 2000, he
joined a lawsuit against the FEDERAL ELECTION
COMMISSION, claiming that political partyfinanced
advertisements in support of presidential
candidates were illegal. The case was
eventually dismissed by the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Wertheimer v. Federal Election Comm’n, 268 F.3d
1070 (D.C. Cir. 2001).

Besides writings in the legal and popular
press, Cox’s prodigious output of scholarship
includes Cases on Labor Law (1948, 8th edition
1976), Civil Rights, the Constitution, and the
Courts (1967), The Role of the Supreme Court in
American Government (1976), and The Court
and the Constitution (1987). Cox is a member of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the recipient of eight honorary law degrees from
U.S. universities.

In 1997, Cox was the subject of a biography
entitled Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation by
Ken Gormley. The book focuses on Cox’s long
and distinguished career as a public servant. In
2001, Cox was honored with the Presidential
Citizens Medal for exemplary public service.