Here is the NY Times obituary on Archibald Cox, the Harvard Law School constitutional law professor who became famous as the special prosecutor who investigated the Watergate scandal during the second Administration of the late president, Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon’s firing of Mr. Cox during a crucial phase of the investigation into the Watergate scandal eventually was a galvanizing event that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation of the presidency and the granting of a pardon to Nixon by his successor, Gerald R. Ford.
Mr. Cox was a solicitor general of the United States in the Kennedy Administration and a Harvard Law School professor when he took over the the Watergate scandal investigation in May, 1973. He was appointed to that position largely because of his friendship with his former student, then Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson. The appointment of Mr. Cox came on the heels of President Nixon’s announcement in late April 1973 of the forced departure from his administration of four top- level appointees after they were swept up in the Watergate affair. The scandals had begun with the June 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate office complex during 1972 Presidential election campaign between Nixon and Democratic nominee, George McGovern.
As the special prosecutor, Mr. Cox soon wound up in a constitutional confrontation with the White House. After the discovery of secret tape recordings of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations, Mr. Cox subpoenaed those tapes and, when the White House refused to comply with the subpoena under principles of Executive Privilege, Mr. Cox sought to enforce the subpoena through the federal courts and won.
When Nixon resisted the federal courts’ orders requiring him to turnover the tapes and Mr. Cox persisted, Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Mr. Cox, but Richardson refused as a matter of principle. As a result, Richardson resigned and Nixon then ordered the deputy attorney general, William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Mr. Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused and was then fired. Finally, Robert H. Bork, the solicitor general, finally complied with Nixon’s order to fire Mr. Cox. Many powerful people in the U.S. government never forgave Mr. Bork’s compliance with Nixon’s order to fire Mr. Cox, and that probably had more to do with Mr. Bork’s eventual rejection years later as a Supreme Court Justice than any of his more relevant views on application of constitutional law.
These extraordinary events were eventually dubbed “the Saturday Night Massacre” of the Watergate scandal, and the resulting public outcry against Nixon was the beginning of the end of his Presidency. Nixon eventually appointed famed Houston trial attorney Leon Jaworski to replace Mr. Cox as special prosecutor, and Mr. Jaworski continued Mr. Cox’s relentless pursuit of the tapes. Nixon eventually turned them over to Mr. Jaworski, their contents proved Nixon’s involvement in the cover up of the Watergate burglary, and Nixon resigned the Presidency in disgrace shortly thereafter.
After his involement in the Watergate affair, Mr. Cox returned to Harvard, where he taught constitutional law and became a professor emeritus in 1984. Rest in peace, Professor Cox.