Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [114]
Still, Clinton’s team had some major factors working in its favor. Judge Susan Webber Wright, a Republican appointee of President George H. W. Bush, had headed Bush’s 1988 campaign operation in Arkansas. Yet she had a reputation as a jurist who called pitches down the middle. Wright had been a student of Clinton’s when he was a law professor at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. (Professor Clinton was so preoccupied with running for Congress that he lost her admiralty exam, requiring her to retake the test.) Wright knew of his rampant reputation as a womanizer. At the same time, the forty-five-year-old Wright was a disciplined jurist who kept politics out of her courtroom. She dressed without frills, like a schoolteacher. She won over lawyers with her direct style and her whimsical wit. This was not someone, from the viewpoint of Clinton’s lawyer, Bob Bennett, who was going to butcher federal precedent dealing with sexual harassment (which, among other things, required concrete proof of adverse job consequences) simply to allow the Jones camp to inflict political damage on Clinton. The rule of law was important to Judge Wright. When it came time to do her duty, Bennett would later say, “I thought we’d get a fair shot.”
In late August, Bennett filed a one-paragraph motion to dismiss, asking that Judge Wright stay the litigation until William Jefferson Clinton “is no longer President, at which time the plaintiff may refile the instant suit.” Bennett attached a sixty-seven-page brief, citing precedents dating back to the founding of the nation. Solicitor General Drew S. Days III, a former Yale law professor with impeccable credentials, filed a statement of interest on behalf of the U.S. government, supporting the White House position.
In the history of the nation, presidents had only been subjected to private lawsuits three times; in each case, the suits were based on conduct that arose before the men took office. In 1904, a lawsuit against President Teddy Roosevelt and members of the New York City Board of Police—filed before Roosevelt took office—was promptly resolved in the president’s favor. In 1946, a suit for monetary damages against President Harry S. Truman, flowing from his conduct as a state court judge more than a decade earlier, was decided in Truman’s favor. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy had quietly settled a minor lawsuit arising out of an automobile accident that took place during the 1960 campaign, after JFK’s motion to stay the case under the federal Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act—which allowed military members to suspend or postpone certain civil actions—had been denied.
Truth be told, there was no clear precedent. In 1982, the Supreme Court in Nixon v. Fitzgerald had declared that a president had broad constitutional immunity from civil suit while in office, relating to his official duties. Civil suits related to a president’s private conduct before the leader took office, however, were entirely different. The Jones case was now turning into a matter of constitutional importance.
Davis and Cammarata filed their own seventy-five-page brief opposing the president’s motion. At a raucous press conference held in Washington, with a sobbing Paula Jones at his side, Davis told the crowd of reporters and supporters: “All Americans, now and forever, will owe a debt of gratitude to Paula Corbin Jones. We will know finally, and forever, that we are all equal before the law. This will be her legacy to us, to her child, to our children, and to our posterity to the last generation.”
Despite that invocation of patriotism and apple pie, Judge Susan Webber Wright was not so easily seduced. She decided to split the loaf. On one hand, Judge Wright wrote in a brief opinion: “The rights to Plaintiff Jones as an American citizen