3 Archibald Cox citations (2024)

Archibald Cox

Social protest and even civil disobedience serve the law's need for growth. Ideally, reform would come according to reason and justice without self-help and disturbing, almost violent, forms of protest. … Still, candor compels one here again to acknowledge the gap between the ideal and the reality. Short of the millennium, sharp changes in the law depend partly upon the stimulus of protest.

Archibald Cox

Even in a time of ferment and necessary social change—especially in such time—the most important thing about the legal profession is that we inherit the tradition of seven or eight centuries of continuous concern for the institutions and aspirations—for the processes, ideals and sense of right and justice—that make for a free and civilized society. It is not the age of the profession that

matters… What matters most is that through the centuries the men of law have been persistently concerned with the resolution of disputes… in ways that enable society to achieve its goals with a minimum of force and a maximum of reason. Our own era has urgent need for lawyers not to resist change but to channel the vital forces at work in the community along the lines of justice and reason, on

a scale and at a pace heretofore unprecedented. Only thus can we fulfil our ancient heritage.