Suit Would Not Spur Crisis, Paula Jones’ Attorney Says

WASHINGTON — In a preview of his expected arguments today before the U.S. Supreme Court, an attorney for Paula Corbin Jones said Sunday that President Clinton is resorting to a “Chicken Little defense” by forecasting a constitutional disaster for the presidency unless Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against him is delayed.

Jones’ lawyer, Joseph Cammarata, told interviewers on ABC-TV’s “This Week” that his client’s suit against Clinton should be permitted to go forward because the president has ample time to defend himself.

But Stanford University law professor Kathleen Sullivan, speaking on the same program, said the president is only seeking to delay the lawsuit until he leaves office.

Sullivan, who has filed a brief supporting Clinton’s claim of temporary immunity, agreed that “he’s not above the law.” However, the president and his successors need to be kept from becoming “a magnet for civil litigation in an age of talk radio,” she said.

“The presidency could become a magnet for all kinds of lawsuits by disgruntled folks across the country, and we ought to have a rule that protects the president from that,” Sullivan said.

Jones’ suit, filed in 1994, claims that Clinton, as Arkansas governor in 1991, harassed her with a crude sexual proposition in a Little Rock hotel during a state-sponsored conference. Clinton has denied the allegation of Jones, who was a state employee at the time.

After hearing Monday’s arguments, the Supreme Court is expected to rule by June whether Jones’ lawsuit can go forward or whether she and her lawyers must wait until Clinton no longer is president.

Clinton’s lawyers are asking the high court to reverse two lower-court rulings. A federal judge in Arkansas ruled that the Jones case should be delayed until Clinton leaves office but that pretrial fact-finding could start at once. Last January, an appellate court said all proceedings could begin while Clinton held office.

Cammarata, referring to the character in the childhood fable who claimed the sky was falling, said the president’s “Chicken Little defense” exaggerates the danger of Jones’ suit.

“He thinks the judiciary will be some rogue political body that will try to tie him up, but the purpose of a court or a judge is to manage litigation, to assure that the litigants are free from harassment,” he contended.

Arguing that such a suit is not burdensome and will not detract from the president’s duties, as Clinton’s legal team has contended, Cammarata said:

“His job is not unremitting. He does have a personal capacity. He plays golf. He vacations. He writes a book. . . . He jogs. He spends time at McDonald’s.”

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Sullivan, however, argued that “the presidency demands so much of his time and we the people demand so much of his time that a civil lawsuit should not [be allowed to] distract his energies from his constitutional duties.”

The separation-of-powers doctrine in the Constitution is at stake in this case, she said.

“The separation of powers means courts shouldn’t be telling the president how to manage his time, shouldn’t be telling the president which is more important, going to a NATO summit or answering a deposition in Little Rock,” Sullivan said.

If the president had to answer every lawsuit filed against him, that would make the courts “in charge of the presidential calendar and the presidential agenda,” she said.