Early Life and Law Career
Cox was the son of Archibald and Frances Perkins Cox. His mother was the sister of Maxwell Perkins, an editor at the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons. A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, Cox attended the Wardlaw School, and St. Paul's School. He graduated from Harvard College in 1934 and from Harvard Law School in 1937 where he was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. He was a clerk for U.S. Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After his clerkship, he joined the Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge and Rugg, now known as Ropes & Gray. During World War II, he was appointed to the National Defense Board, and then to the Office of the Solicitor General.
After the end of World War II, Cox joined the faculty of Harvard University, where he taught courses in torts and in administrative, constitutional, and labor law. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1955. During the 1950s, he became an informal adviser and speech-writer for John F. Kennedy, who was then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Cox assisted Kennedy's campaign for President in 1960. In 1961, Cox joined the Kennedy administration as solicitor general. At a time when civil rights protesters were routinely chased with dogs and clubbed, he often appeared before the Supreme Court in support of their cause. Among the cases he was involved with were Baker v. Carr, which set the constitutional standards for reapportionment; Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, which set a precedent by recognizing the Constitution's authorization for federal laws requiring desegregation of public accommodations for African-Americans; and South Carolina v. Katzenbach, which upheld the Voting Rights Act. In 1965, he returned to Harvard's law school. He remained a highly sought-after 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.
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