Archibald Cox: Teacher

Authors

David J. Seipp, Boston University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1998

ISSN

0006-8047

Publisher

Boston University School of Law

Language

en-US

Abstract

Archie Cox is a teacher. He taught generations of law students at Harvard Law School and, more recently, at Boston University School of Law. He left the classroom on three occasions, reluctantly, when first President Truman, then President Kennedy, then President Nixon's Attorney General called Professor Cox to Washington to play a part on the national stage. In his first weeks as Watergate Special Prosecutor, Cox carried with him a stack of blue books, Labor Law examinations he still had to grade (p. 263). In the public eye, his straight-backed demeanor, his familiar crew cut, half-glasses, bow tie, and tweeds were the very image of "The Professor." Each time a Washington job ended-and they ended in abrupt and unexpected ways-Cox returned to the classroom. Over a teaching career that has extended (thus far) from the Fall Semester of 1945 to the Spring Semester of 1997, he taught the most valuable lesson a constitutional democracy can learn: the limits of the rule of law.

Recommended Citation

David J. Seipp, Archibald Cox: Teacher , in 78 Boston University Law Review 565 (1998).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2665