Personal and Professional Integrity in the Legal Profession: Lessons from President Clinton and Kenneth Starr
Clinton and Kenneth Starr
Personal and Professional Integrity in the Legal Profession: Lessons from President Clinton and Kenneth Starr
Charles J. Ogletree 0 1
0 Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Personal and Professional Integrity in the Legal Profession: Lessons from President
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Personal and Professional Integrity in the
Legal Profession: Lessons from
President Clinton and Kenneth Starr
* Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and Faculty Director ofthe Clinical Legal Studies
Program at Harvard Law School. The author served as legal counsel to Frank D. Carter, Esq.
who was Monica Lewinsky's first attorney and who was later subpoenaed by the Office
ofIndependent Counsel to serve as a witness in the investigation ofPresident Clinton. Portions ofthis
article were delivered at the November 10, 1998, Order ofthe Coif Lecture at Washington and
Lee University. The author would like to thank Kwame Manley of Harvard Law School and
Rafiq Kalam Id Din of New York University Law School for their invaluable research and
editing assistance.
I Introduction
Throughout 199
7 and early 1998
, public debate about the legal system
centered on two competing and troubling figures: President Bill Clinton and
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. With months of impeachment hearings,
year-long denials, and Barbara Walters's interviews, the country had an
overconsuming dose of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Today, the American public
has had enough of the denials, news commentary, and legal analysis of the
case. Yet for the broader legal community, there is one issue that we have
failed to examine closely: the personal and professional ethical lessons we
should learn from the Clinton/Starr dilemma. This essay explores the ethical
dynamics surrounding our Commander-in-Chief and his chief adversary and
the extent to which their activities can produce valuable lessons for the
profession.
Even before this ethical quagmire took center stage, the general diagnosis
of the state of legal ethics was dire.' Everyday Americans questioned the
professionalism, trust, and honesty of lawyers, while legal critics noted the
increased mistrust and suspicion among attorneys themselves.2 What has
created this bleak impression of lawyers involves the same elements that have
permeated the behavior of President Clinton and Kenneth Starr: a decline in
civil and courteous conduct, frequent lapses of appropriate ethical and
professional behavior, and an increasingly aggressive and competitive drive to "win
at all costs."3 Although it is certainly the case that lawyers have never
enjoyed lofty reverence, 4 lawyers previously had a greater claim to integrity and
virtue.' Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement and its progeny inspired many
citizens "to view law as a shining sword with which to vanquish the
long1. See Susan Daicoff, Lawyer Know Thyself A Review of Empirical Research on
AttorneyAttributesBearingon Professionalism,46 AM. U. L. REV. 1337, 1344 (1997) ("The
vast majority of commentators generally agree that the level of 'professionalism' displayed by
attorneys has declined dramatically in the last twenty-five years.").
2. See Marc Galanter, TheFacesofMistrust TheImage ofLawyersin PublicOpinion,
Jokes,andPoliticalDiscourse6,6 U. CIN. L. REV. 805, 806 (1998) (observing that "the lawyer
contrives enforceability to supplement the failing supply of reciprocity, moral obligation, and
fellow-feeling").
3. Daicoff,supranote 1, at 1344.
4. See Myma Oliver, Lawyers Losing the Verdict in the CourtofPublic Opinion,L.A_
TIMEs, Oct 19, 1987, at A3 ("Lawyers have suffered a poor image, despite their high status,
since Biblical days when Jesus admonished: 'Woe unto you, also, ye lawyers! For ye lade men
with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your
fingers."' (quoting Luke 11:46)).
5. See Galanter, supra note 2, at 811 ("What is singular about the current sense of
decline is the high elevation from which descent is measured. The period around 1960 may well
have been the historic high point of public regard for law and lawyers.... Lawyers were riding
awave offavorable regard ofthe whole panoply of social institutions.").
festering problems of exclusion, poverty, and oppression," and Americans saw
lawyers as "valiant and dedicated warriors for justice."6 Poignantly, though
perhaps ironically, it was the Watergate scandal that resulted in the end of the
high regard of the law and the beginning of the continuing decline of the
lawyer-statesman and lawyer-social engineer.' During the past two decades,
public opinion o (...truncated)