Archibald Cox

Archibald Cox

Archibald Cox Jr. ( May 12, 1912 in Plainfield , New Jersey, † May 29, 2004 in Brooksville , Maine ) was an American professor of constitutional law and state special investigator in the Watergate affair .

Cox was a member of the Democratic Party . In 1960 , Cox was a member of John F. Kennedy's campaign team . In 1961 he became legal advisor to the President and, as United States Solicitor General, third man in the United States Department of Justice. He stayed for a while under his successor Lyndon B. Johnson before he moved to Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts as a professor of constitutional law in 1965 . He advised the Massachusetts Parliament on irregularities involving officials.

On May 18, 1973, he was appointed Special Counsel in the Watergate Affair by the Attorney General. His job was to clarify whether President Richard Nixon's administration was involved in the break-in of the Democratic Party's campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC .

When a witness told Cox that Nixon had been taping all conversations with employees for years, he requested all tapes from the President's office relating to Watergate. The President refused and tried to convince Cox to forego the seizure. When Cox refused, he was released on October 20, 1973 on the orders of the President ( Saturday Night Massacre ). The dismissal of Cox called the American Congress on the scene, which eventually led to the resignation of Nixon.

In 2001, Cox was of Bill Clinton , the Public Service Medal of the US president awarded. In 1955 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1980 he became an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .

Web links

• Literature by and about Archibald Cox in the WorldCat bibliographic database