Archibald Cox: Conscience Of A Nation

by Ken Gormley

By October 1973 special prosecutor Archibald Cox was tracing the Watergate cover-up to the Oval Office. President Nixon demanded that he stop. In the “Saturday Night Massacre” two heads of the Justice Department quit before Nixon found a subordinate (Robert Bork) willing to fire Cox. Immediately public opinion swung against the president and turned Cox into a hero—seemingly Washington’s last honest man.Cox’s life was distinguished well before that Saturday night. He had been a clerk for the legendary judge Learned Hand, a distinguished professor at Harvard Law School, and the Solicitor General, arguing many Supreme Court cases. He exemplified what we want lawyers to be. At its core Archibald Cox is the story of a Yankee who went to Washington but refused to leave his principles behind.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

608 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 1997

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the most amazingly written bio, but I love Archie (worked on a long oral history project about him in my former life at Columbia's Oral History Office)-- just reading about the Kennedy years now.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary!

[David Blankenship · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

I picked up this book from the dollar table of a used bookstore out of curiosity. I began reading it almost exactly a half-century after the decency of Archibald Cox prevailed against a nasty, self-absorbed president who continually cared more about his own place than the nation and abused his power in horrific ways. While the first half of the book could have been tightened up quite a bit, and at times the author's admiration of Cox shined through a bit too much, it was undoubtedly the story of Cox's involvement with Watergate that made this book.

As we enter into an era in which a far nastier, self-absorbed and abusive president has once again been returned to power by his adoring fans, I genuinely wonder how Cox would have handled being the prosecutor over the past few years. Could by the sheer will of his decency could he have prevailed against the odds to finally turn people onto the truth? I wonder.

One thing about this book that surprised me in its telling of the Watergate story was the respect paid to Elliot Richardson, who was Nixon's AG and in many ways enabled Cox to do his job by holding back the worst impulses of Nixon and his minions. This book makes me want to read more about him.