On the Right - Clinton at the Bar - consequences are minimal if Bill Clinton is disbarred in Arkansas - Brief Article - Column

NEW YORK, MAY 23

Concerning the proposed disbarment of William Jefferson Clinton, a few observations:

1. The movement, in Arkansas, can't be dismissed as political. The inquiry was set into motion by a finding of a special committee of the bar whose jurisdiction is disbarment actions. There are 14 members of this committee, six of whom addressed the question of Mr. Clinton. Two complaints had been filed. The first, by a conservative organization based in Atlanta; the second, by federal judge Susan Webber Wright.

Now Judge Wright is indeed the same judge who ruled Clinton to be in contempt of court by his testimony in the Paula Jones suit, fining him $90,000. But it was also Judge Wright who threw Paula Jones's case out of court in April 1998, ruling that the civil suit was insubstantial. That ruling did not preclude a ruling on the testimony that had been given by Mr. Clinton. The disbarment finding was made by five lawyers and one retired schoolteacher, and will now be considered by a circuit judge in Arkansas.

2. If the recommendations of the bar committee are followed, the judge would proceed to disbar. But at that point Mr. Clinton could appeal to the Arkansas supreme court, against whose findings Clinton attorney David Kendall would have no place to turn, except perhaps the Magna Carta.

3. There would be no practical consequence in finding Mr. Clinton unfit to practice law in Arkansas. The legal establishment there might as well rule that Mr. Clinton can't practice medicine. He has no intention of putting out a shingle, in the style of Thomas Dewey, and actually proceeding to practice law. He did practice briefly between his first and second terms as governor of Arkansas, but there are no indications whatever that he would consider the law professionally in 2001. It is expected that he would lecture, teach, write, and argue before nonlegal bodies on political-policy issues.

Richard Nixon was disbarred in New York some time after Watergate, but had sought no role in the practice of law.

4. Why, then, go to the trouble? Well, forces were set in motion by Mr. Clinton's testimony, and it is absolutely clear to the Arkansas supreme court's Committee on Professional Conduct that Clinton lied under oath.

Now on this matter, cultural questions are applicable. David Kendall has announced, on behalf of the president, that a vigorous defense will be raised. On what will it hinge?

Well, witness Clinton told the grand jury, in reply to questions touched off by the Paula Jones lawsuit, that he had never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. Ah, well. What he had with Monica is, in the view of the Committee on Professional Conduct-sexual relations. But Mr. Clinton's defense, all along, has been that what-he-did isn't really sexual relations, whence the great epistemological furor of 1999, generated by Mr. Clinton's words, "that depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." It is possible, indeed likely, that Mr. Kendall will argue that Arkansas is a . . . primitive part of the greater redneck culture, and down there if you kiss a girl on the hand, they're going to say you had sexual relations with her.

Since some attention is correctly given (by legal men of affairs) to the question, "Did the defendant intend to lie?" the supreme court of Arkansas, the final arbiter on the question, may be persuaded by such a line of argument: to wit, when Mr. Clinton said he hadn't done X, he really didn't think he had done X.

5. Well, there is no substantial argument for simply aborting the whole procedure. In the first place, you can't legally do so. In the second place, the law exacts consummation of inquiries raised by appropriate arms of the law. And only Arkansas has this bit in its mouth: Did Clinton commit perjury to the point of warranting ejection from the bar?

6. Those who believe the inquiry should proceed in an orderly way need not believe that Mr. Clinton should be punished in any palpable way. He does not intend to practice law in Arkansas. And the governor of Arkansas might find some way to dilute the disbarment with clemency of sorts. This would not be easy to phrase, but the design of it could be that Mr. Clinton's mendacity should not be raised in any other proceeding in Arkansas intended to honor, or memorialize President Clinton. An adaptation of the executive clemency idea; entirely appropriate.

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