The Nine [66]
The events resulting from the Court’s decision in Clinton v. Jones became landmarks in American history. While Clinton was facing Jones’s lawyers in January 1998, Kenneth Starr was expanding his investigation of the Whitewater land deal to include possible misconduct by Clinton in the Jones lawsuit. On August 17, as part of Starr’s probe, Clinton was forced to give grand jury testimony at the White House. Four months later, on December 19, 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice.
The vote in the House meant that, for the first time in more than a century, there would be a presidential impeachment trial in the Senate, and under the Constitution the chief justice was obligated to preside. As it happened, Rehnquist may have been the best-qualified person in America for the job. Rehnquist used his free summers to produce a series of bland but readable texts, including Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson, which was published in 1992.
Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican who was then the majority leader of the Senate, decided to choreograph Clinton’s trial to match, as closely as possible, the proceedings against the first President Johnson, in 1868. Rehnquist was a stickler for tradition, too, and he enjoyed reviving those musty rituals. Among these traditions was one that was especially painful for the senators. Under the customs of impeachment trials, all one hundred senators had to watch the entire proceedings in silence from their seats in the Senate chamber; in ordinary circumstances, senators generally visit the floor to vote or speak and then disappear.
As it turned out, Rehnquist had little to do. The Senate heard from no live witnesses, and the “trial” consisted almost entirely of statements by the House “managers”—the members of the Judiciary Committee who served as prosecutors—and Clinton’s defense lawyers. Like any other politically savvy observer, Rehnquist could see that there were never anywhere near two-thirds of the Senate prepared to remove Clinton from office, and he wisely chose to stand back and let the trial grind to its preordained conclusion. The dreary proceedings lasted five weeks.
In all that time, Rehnquist made only a single substantive ruling. Throughout the managers’ opening statements, they referred to the senators as “jurors.” Democrats wanted to emphasize that the Constitution called on the senators to make a broader, political assessment about the propriety of removing the president, not simply the narrow judgment expected of jurors in a criminal case. After several statements from the prosecutors, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa rose from his chair and said, “Mr. Chief Justice, I object to the use and the continued use of the word ‘jurors’ when referring to the Senate sitting as triers in the trial of the impeachment of the president of the United States.”
In his phlegmatic way, Rehnquist said he saw Harkin’s point. “The chair is of the view that the objection of the senator from Iowa is well taken,” he said. “Therefore, counsel should refrain from referring to the senators as jurors.”
Harkin was delighted. Moments later, he whispered to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who was seated at the next desk, “I just won my first Supreme Court case!”
At first, the trial generated a flurry of excitement at the Court, and there was a waiting list for the few seats allotted to the justices and their staff. Soon enough, though, the seats went begging. Rehnquist told anyone who asked that he found the experience boring. Still, there was no denying the sense of history in the Senate chamber on February