Column: Clinton deserves disbarment

The gravamen of respondent's conduct is obstruction of the due administration of justice, a most serious offense, but one that is rendered even more grievous by the fact that in this instance the perpetrator is an attorney and was, at the time of the conduct in question, the holder of the highest public office of this country and in a position of public trust.

Hardly anyone disagreed with this finding by a New York appellate court back in 1976, when it disbarred former president Richard Nixon.

Well, the same finding, in verbatim, can be applied to Bill Clinton in the matter of his false testimony, under oath, in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. And the current occupant of the Oval Office deserves to be disbarred just as surely as did his predecessor, Nixon.

Indeed, that was precisely the conclusion this week of a disciplinary committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The panel of six attorneys and one lay person (a retired teacher) sent along to a state circuit court in Little Rock its recommendation that Clinton be stripped of his license to practice law.

The panel was persuaded, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Clinton violated two Arkansas rules regulating professional conduct of attorneys at law.

Indeed, as a former law professor at the University of Arkansas, the president was no doubt aware of the prospective punishments for lawyers in the Razorback state who engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation and who engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.

Yet, despite being held in contempt of court last year by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving false, misleading and evasive answers in the Paula Jones case to obstruct justice, despite his tacit concession of guilt by his agreement to pay a $90,000 fine, Clinton insists that the disciplinary panel was unfair to recommend his disbarment.

He protests that he is being singled out for harsh punishment merely because he happens to be the president of the United States.

In other words, if Clinton was some ordinary pettifogger, rather than the man sworn to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of these United States and to uphold the laws of the land, he would not in danger of disbarment.

He thinks it unjust that he is held to a higher standard than the average lawyer. He wants to be judged by the lowest standard.

But the U.S. Supreme Court does not see it that way. In a 1998 disciplinary case, in which the court withheld a law license from an aspiring barrister, the justices declared:

There is simply no place in the law for a man or woman who cannot or will not tell the truth, even when his or her interests are involved. In the legal profession there must be a reverence for the truth.

And if this standard applies to run-of-the-mill lawyers or wannabe lawyers, such as the plaintiff in the aforementioned Supreme Court case, then it must doubly, or triply, apply to lawyers in high places.

Indeed, in its decision to disbar former president Nixon, the New York appellate court held that his misconduct was even more grievous because, at the time it occurred, he occupied the highest office in the land, a position of public trust.

And it bears mention that it mattered not at all to the state appellate court that Nixon was not actually practicing law at the time of his misconduct, a defense made on Clinton's behalf by such loyalists as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and O.J. Simpson lawyer F. Lee Bailey.

What mattered to the appellate court passing judgment on Nixon, and what ought to matter to the circuit court judge who renders the disbarment ruling on Clinton, was preservation of the rule of law in this country.

It is bad enough when any lawyer commits professional misconduct and thereby undermines public confidence in the legal system. When that lawyer also happens to be a high-ranking public official -- a congressman, a judge, a president -- the damage to the legal system is multiplied exponentially.

Richard Nixon recognized this, apparently; he did not contest his disbarment. But Bill Clinton has absolutely no shame, no remorse. And that is why he vows to fight his much-deserved disbarment.

Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune.