Jones v. Clinton
| Decision Date | 28 December 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. LR-C-94-290.,LR-C-94-290. |
| Citation | 869 F. Supp. 690 |
| Parties | Paula Corbin JONES, Plaintiff, v. William Jefferson CLINTON and Danny Ferguson, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas |
Daniel M. Traylor, Traylor Law Firm, Little Rock, AR, and Gilbert K. Davis and Joseph Cammarata Fairfax, VA, for plaintiff.
Kathlyn Graves, Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, Stephen C. Engstrom, Wilson, Engstrom, Corum, Dudley & Coulter, Little Rock, AR, and Robert S. Bennett, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meaghen & Flom, Washington, DC, for defendants.
Bill W. Bristow, Seay & Bristow, Jonesboro, AR and Robert Batton, Jacksonville, AR, for Mr. Ferguson.
The Plaintiff, Paula Corbin Jones, filed a damage suit against the Defendants William Jefferson Clinton and Danny Ferguson to recover for acts which were alleged to have taken place primarily while Defendant Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and Defendant Ferguson was a Trooper with the Arkansas State Police assigned to the Governor. Subsequently, in the General Election of November, 1992, Mr. Clinton was elected President of the United States and assumed that office on January 20, 1993.
The complaint was filed on May 6, 1994, and was predicated on an alleged incident which was said to have occurred on May 8, 1991. The action alleged sexual harassment and conspiracy pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985, which are provisions included in civil rights legislation of the reconstruction era. It also alleged state law claims of defamation and outrage.
Defendant Ferguson responded to these allegations by, in essence, denying any which might involve questionable activities on his part. Defendant Clinton responded with a motion to bifurcate the briefing schedule so as to permit the question of Presidential immunity to be argued on a motion to dismiss before any other questions were presented. On July 21, 1994, the Court entered a Memorandum and Order allowing President Clinton to file a motion to dismiss on the basis of Presidential immunity and deferring and preserving the filing of any other motions or pleadings until the issue of Presidential immunity had been resolved. Jones v. Clinton, 858 F.Supp. 902 (E.D.Ark.1994). The Court noted that this order was purely procedural in nature and addressed only the question of whether Presidential immunity would be considered as a threshold issue. Id. at 907 n. 6.
The basic issue, therefore, which this Memorandum Opinion and Order addresses is whether a civil action may be asserted against the President of the United States while he is in office when the fact situation alleged in the complaint arose before his election and assumption of office.
The President has asserted that he may not be sued in a civil action while sitting as President, even when the facts asserted by the Plaintiff occurred, if at all, before he was elected or assumed the office. This, of course, is a claim of absolute immunity. The President would have the Court dismiss the complaint while preserving through some equitable tolling of the statute of limitations the right of Ms. Jones to sue him civilly as soon as he left office. The Justice Department in its Statement of Interest of the United States also argued for immunity, but urged the Court in the alternative simply to stay the proceedings until the President had left office. Ms. Jones argued against immunity, but also argued alternatively for dismissal with an automatic reinstatement on the Court's docket on the last day of his Presidency and against a stay. All briefs discussed at some length the intent of the framers of the Constitution and interpretations of various scholars and judges relating to this subject, and all were thorough and well researched.
The Court believes that the place to begin this discussion, before coming to the vital question of constitutional interpretation, is in English law and the development of the rights and liberties of the English people. The rights and liberties of England became our inheritance. The Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the states contain provisions that come directly from that source.
Almost all of the states adopted "reception statutes" receiving into state law the English common law and acts of Parliament as they existed as of a certain date — which was usually 1607, 1620, or 1776 — except to the extent that they were contrary to our federal or state constitutions or statutes or were contrary to our form of government. Arkansas adopted such a statute shortly after becoming a state. Ark.Code Ann. § 1-2-119 (Michie 1987); Ark.Stat.Ann. § 1-101 (1976 Repl.); discussed in Moore v. Sharpe, 91 Ark. 407, 121 S.W. 341 (1909). The statute adopted the English common law, subject to the stated limitations, as it existed prior to the fourth year of James I. Various English statutes or common law rules passed into Arkansas law as a result. E.g. Biscoe v. Thweatt, 74 Ark. 545, 86 S.W. 432 (1905) (Statute of Charitable Uses); Horsley v. Hilburn, 44 Ark. 458 (1884) (); Moody v. Walker, 3 Ark. 140 (1840) (Rule Against Perpetuities). Also received were those portions of the Magna Carta relating to due process of law, equal protection, trial by jury, and rights unrelated to the feudal system.
The Magna Carta was largely a restatement of feudal law pertaining to land tenures and their incidents, and thus most of it has no application here. However, in addition to enshrining in English law some of our basic rights and liberties, it constituted a series of limitations placed upon the King and his authority. There would follow in English history a long and bloody struggle to define the rights of the monarchy as opposed to Parliament and the citizenry and also to the common law itself.
The tension between the King and Parliament, on the one hand, and the King and the common law, on the other, reached its heights with the ascension to the throne of the Stuart monarchy in the person of King James the First (who was James the Sixth of Scotland). Friction soon arose between the King and the House of Commons. At the root of the disagreement, once again, was the Magna Carta. See generally William Swindler, Magna Carta: Legend and Legacy 169-176 (1965).
An important participant in all of this was Sir Edward Coke, whose writings had an enormous influence on English and American law, and who had served as Solicitor General and later Attorney General under Queen Elizabeth I and also as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He subsequently would become Chief Justice of the King's Bench under King James I. See 3 Roscoe Pound, Jurisprudence 428 (1959). Under Elizabeth, as her attorney, Coke had been a staunch defender of the Crown, but as a judge, he would quote Bracton to King James: "The King ought to be under no man, but under God and the law." Swindler, supra, at 172. He also stated in Dr. Bonham's Case, 8 Co. 113b, 118a, 77 Eng.Rep. 646, 652 (1610): "And it appears in our bodies, that in many cases the common law will control acts of Parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void" if they are "against common right and reason." William B. Lockhart et al., The American Constitution 251 (5th ed. 1981). That was unlikely to be a true statement of the law in the early 17th Century, but to the extent that it was precedent, it may be said to be an early expression of judicial review.
None of this and other frictions set well with the King, and Coke was dismissed from the bench, turning his efforts to Parliament. The continuing friction between Parliament and James' successor, King Charles I, ultimately led to the adoption of the Petition of Right, which in essence ratified and extended the Magna Carta, and in effect further limited the prerogatives of the Crown. A defining moment came when the House of Commons rejected a proposal of the House of Lords that would add a clause recognizing the sovereignty of the King. Coke gave this fulmination:
I know that prerogative is part of the law, but sovereign power is no Parliamentary word; in my opinion, it weakens Magna Carta and all our statutes; for they are absolute without any saving of sovereign power. And shall we now add to it, we shall weaken the foundation of law, and then the building must needs fall; take we heed what we yield unto — Magna Carta is such a Fellow, he will have no Sovereign.
The Petition of Right was one of the foundation stones of the English Constitution. It enlarged upon the Magna Carta as a constitutional limitation upon the power of the monarchy. It made it apparent that the King's prerogative was limited. Sub Deo et Lege1 was the law of the land.
In the formulation of Article II of the Constitution, there were varying viewpoints as to the office of the President.2 Some, such as Roger Sherman of Connecticut, believed that the President should be "nothing more than an instrument for carrying the will of the Legislature into effect," while others, such as Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, thought the President should be "the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, against Legislative tyranny." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Constitution: Article II, in An American Primer 121-22 (Daniel J. Boorstin ed., 1968). What resulted was the compromise that we have today, amended only slightly from the original. It sets out the powers and duties of the Executive Branch (i.e., the President and the administrators he appoints), but it does not address the immunity question.
A large part of the problem, aside from the silence of the Constitution, is that for all practical purposes, the Executive Branch, unlike the Congress and the Supreme Court, consists of...
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