Personal and Professional Integrity in the Legal Profession: Lessons from President Clinton and Kenneth Starr

Washington and Lee Law Review, Dec 1999

By Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Published on 06/01/99

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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 1 Thi s Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington and Lee Law Review at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington and Lee Law Review by an authorized editor of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information , please contact , USA Part of the Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons - 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)


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Charles J. Jr. Ogletree. Personal and Professional Integrity in the Legal Profession: Lessons from President Clinton and Kenneth Starr, Washington and Lee Law Review, 1999, Volume 56, Issue 3,