WASHINGTON -- President Reagan announced Monday he is appointing Robert Bork, who as a Justice Department official during Watergate fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, to a federal appeals judgeship.
Bork, 54, a former professor of law at Yale University, will be named to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the White House announced.
Bork has been a partner in the Washington law firm of Kirkland and Ellis since July. He will succeed Carl E. McGowan on the Court of Appeals.
Bork was among those reportedly considered for the Supreme Court opening filled by Reagan when he nominated Sandra Day O'Connor as the court's first woman justice.
There has been speculation Bork would be named to the appeals court bench as a possible holding pattern before a Supreme Court appointment by Reagan. Five of the nine justices are over 70 years old and there is a good chance Reagan will have the opportunity to make another nomination.
Bork served as solicitor general in the Justice Department from 1973 near the end of the Nixon administration through the Ford administraiton.
It was Bork, then the No. 3 official in the Justice Department, who carried out orders in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973 to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
The task fell to Bork after Attorney General Elliot Richardson was fired and Richardson's deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest.
