William John "Billy Jack" Cox (born February 15, 1941) is an American

public interest The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. Overview Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefor ...

lawyer and author.

Biography

Early career

Employed in 1962 by the El Cajon Police Department, he attended the nearby

San Diego Police Department The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of San Diego, California. The department was officially established on May 16, 1889. History Prior to the establishment of the San Diego Police Departm ...

Academy. In 1968, Cox transferred to the

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...

where he graduated from the Police Academy. He received an associate degree in Police Administration from

Rio Hondo College Rio Hondo College is a public community college in Whittier, California. The college is named after the Rio Hondo. Founded in 1960, it mainly serves the cities of Whittier, Pico Rivera, Santa Fe Springs, El Monte, and South El Monte. Rio Hon ...

. In 1974 he was appointed a Deputy Los Angeles County District Attorney.Biography of William John Cox
/ref> Believing that control of the United States government had been seized by special interest groups and no longer cared for the voters who elected it, Cox filed a ''pro bono''

class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

lawsuit on July 9, 1979, on behalf of every American citizen directly in the Supreme Court of the United States, which was denied without comment.

Holocaust Case

Cox later represented

Mel Mermelstein Melvin Mermelstein (born Moric Mermelstein; September 25, 1926 – January 28, 2022) was a Czechoslovak-born American Holocaust survivor and autobiographer. A Jew, he was the sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz concentratio ...

, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Cox investigated and sued a group of radical right-wing organizations, including the

Liberty Lobby Liberty Lobby was a far-right think tank and lobby group founded in 1958 by Willis Carto. Carto was known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, white nationalism, and Holocaust denial. The organization produced a daily five-mi ...

and

Institute for Historical Review The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States-based nonprofit organization which promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a " his ...

, that engaged in

Holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...

and which had offered a reward for proof of Nazi gas chambers. The primary legal issue in the case was resolved in October 1981, when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas T. Johnson took

judicial notice Judicial notice is a rule in the law of evidence that allows a fact to be introduced into evidence if the truth of that fact is so notorious or well-known, or so authoritatively attested, that it cannot reasonably be doubted. This is done upon the ...

of the fact that "Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944." The Holocaust Case was the subject of the 1991

TNT Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagen ...

motion picture, '' Never Forget'', produced by

Leonard Nimoy Leonard Simon Nimoy (; March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015) was an American actor, famed for playing Spock in the '' Star Trek'' franchise for almost 50 years. This includes originating Spock in the original ''Star Trek'' series in 1966, th ...

Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1991, Cox arranged for the publication of almost 1,800 photographs of the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

under the control of the

École Biblique École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, commonly known as École Biblique, is a French academic establishment in Jerusalem specializing in archaeology and Biblical exegesis. History Foundation The school was founded in 1890 ...

that had been suppressed for more than 40 years. He signed a contract with the

Biblical Archaeology Society The Biblical Archaeology Society was established in 1974 by American lawyer Hershel Shanks, as a non-sectarian organisation that supports and promotes biblical archaeology. Its current publications include the ''Biblical Archaeology Review'', whil ...

to publish ''A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls'' in November 1991. The

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Ma ...

in California subsequently allowed all "qualified scholars" to study its set of photographs, and the

Israel Antiquities Authority The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA, he, רשות העתיקות ; ar, داﺌرة الآثار, before 1990, the Israel Department of Antiquities) is an independent Israeli governmental authority responsible for enforcing the 1978 Law of ...

permitted the publication of a

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

edition.

Later career

Between 1999 and 2007, Cox served as a supervising trial counsel for the State Bar of California. In 2012, Cox drafted and commenced circulation of the United States Voters' Rights Amendment (USVRA) to the

U.S. Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...

, which provides for national paid voting holidays, a national hand-countable paper

ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...

, and a process for the people to have a more direct role in the formulation of

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...

. Moreover, it mandates

voter registration In electoral systems, voter registration (or enrollment) is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote must register (or enroll) on an electoral roll, which is usually a prerequisite for being entitled or permitted to vote. The r ...

and prohibits

voter suppression Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting ...

, restricts

gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...

and lengthy campaigns, and it encourages public financing of elections and discourages paid

lobbying In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which ...

. Finally, it eliminates the Electoral College to allow for open primaries and the popular election of presidents.Stapleton, Richard John, "Voting: Duty, Privilege or Right?" ''Media Monitors Network'', July 22, 2012, http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/96598.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cox, William John 1941 births Living people Southwestern Law School alumni California lawyers People from Lubbock, Texas Activists from California American male writers Writers from California Writers from Texas