Category Archives: Major Print Outlets

Stuart Taylor, Jr.’s media appearances in print publications.

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Did Clinton Harass Paula Jones?

by Susan Estrich and Stuart Taylor Jr.

Slate.com

From: Susan Estrich
To: Stuart Taylor Jr.
Posted Thursday, Nov. 7, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

Dear Stu:

This is going to be fun. Before too long, I hope, we can talk about what really interests me, which is that sex is back at work–and that might just be fine, if we could just learn to respect each other. My students wear unbelievably short skirts to interviews and assert the right to flirt to equalize things with the guys, who talk about sports. I think they might be right. So, first Anita and Paula, and we can fight about who is consistent, and who has bad motives, and then on to what matters.

Let me begin. I don’t really think of either of these as sexual-harassment cases, if you want to know the truth. What troubled me in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas affair was less what he said to her a decade ago (you know me, I would’ve laughed and told him to get lost, but she’s not me, and he was chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission–which makes him pretty “shabby” in my book, but wouldn’t disqualify him from a seat on the Supreme Court) than what those senators did to her, and how Clarence Thomas–a man I thought unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court–responded by playing the race card and turning himself into the victim of a racially motivated attack. I wouldn’t want Johnnie Cochran to be on the Supreme Court either.

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Paula Jones: A Federal Crime?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

A stunning irony, so far unnoticed, lurks in a pair of pending Supreme Court cases: Clinton v. Jones, in which the president and his Department of Justice seek to block a sexual harassment lawsuit against him until after he leaves office, and the lesser-known United States v. Lanier.

The irony is that the crude sexual advances of which Bill Clinton stands accused by Paula Corbin Jones would apparently be a federal crime under the Clinton Justice Department’s legal analysis in the case of David Lanier, who was a monstrously lecherous chancery court judge in rural western Tennessee.

Clinton’s alleged conduct would be even more clearly a federal crime under the analysis suggested in amicus briefs filed by leading feminist groups and scholars.

Another irony is that while the Lanier case has become (understandably) a cause celebre in the women’s movement-with every major feminist legal advocacy group in the nation urging reversal of an appeals court decision that threw out Lanier’s convictions-the president’s so-far-successful effort to slam the courthouse door in the face of Paula Jones until the year 2001 has prompted not a whimper of protest from any of them.

Given all this, the rumor in the Supreme Court press room-that the cases may be set for argument the same day, sometime in January-seems almost too delicious to be true.

(For a fuller discussion of the Jones-Clinton case, see "Her Case Against Clinton," in the November issue of The American Lawyer, which I wrote before becoming aware of the parallels presented by the Lanier case.)

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Her Case Against Clinton – Stronger Than Anita Hill’s Against Thomas

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The American Lawyer

WHEN WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON V. PAULA CORBIN JONES COMES BEFORE THE U.S. Supreme Court – as expected – in January, all eyes will be on Justice Clarence Thomas. Will a flicker of emotion crease his usually impassive glare as he ponders a she-said, he-said fact pattern so hauntingly reminiscent of his own ordeal five years ago? Will he think of how – in the words that spill like a raging torrent from Thomas’s close friend (and sometime self-appointed spokesman) Armstrong Williams – "Mrs. Clinton went out to San Francisco to present Anita Hill with the woman of the year award" ? Williams adds: "I wonder when she’s going to present an award to Paula Jones? And where is NOW? People need to see the hypocrisy here."

It was actually an American Bar Association commission on women that presented an award to Hill. But Williams has a point. Hillary Clinton spoke at the August 1992 award luncheon, celebrating Hill for having "transformed consciousness and changed history with her courageous testimony" against Thomas. Both women were hailed as heroines at that ABA convention, by a host of women lawyers and others who have shunned Jones as a pariah.

Generally overlooked, meanwhile, has been the fact that the evidence supporting Paula Jones’s allegations of predatory, if nor depraved, behavior by Bill Clinton is far stronger than the evidence supporting Anita Hill’s allegations of far less serious conduct by Clarence Thomas.

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Racial Preferences Meet Democracy

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

"The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."

So says the key provision of the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI)-otherwise known as Proposition 209-which will go before the state’s voters on Nov. 5. It will be the first up-or-down popular vote ever on racial preferences.

There are good reasons to vote no:

• The CCRI would mean a dramatic drop in admissions of black and Hispanic students to the University of California’s elite campuses, which serve as gate-ways to opportunity in a society still plagued by racial inequality.

• It would ban not only preferential selection processes but also racially targeted recruitment and outreach programs that seek to increase the minority applicant pool.

• It could make it more difficult to offset the potent but hard-to-prove brand of discrimination against black and Hispanic candidates that may still prevail in many police and fire departments and other government workplaces.

• Such a cold-turkey withdrawal from the current system could have a dispiriting effect on many black and Hispanic people who have come to believe-sincerely, if erroneously-that racial preferences are the only way they can get a fair shake.

• Many CCRI supporters preach a colorblind absolutism that may impede wise public policy, and that is required neither by the Constitution nor by principles of fairness and morality-not, at least, in comparison with such established practices as preferential admissions of affluent alumni children.

But for all that, I would vote yes.

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The Court at the Crossroads

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

While you would hardly know it from the tenor of the campaign, this year’s presidential election could have a far more dramatic impact than most on the political-philosophical orientation of the Supreme Court, and thus on the direction of constitutional law.

That’s because the Court is now so closely divided on such vital Issues that the replacement of one of the conservative justices with a liberal, or vice versa, could make an enormous difference-above all, on questions of race, congressional power, and states’ rights.

For this reason, the next confirmation battle could well be reminiscent of the 1987 donnybrook over Robert Bork. The stakes were high then mainly because the pivotal justice whom Bork would have replaced, Lewis Powell Jr., had sided with liberal majorities in so many critical 5-4 decisions.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that all nine justices will stay on for four more years, or that any who step down will be replaced with people of similar orientation. But two scenarios could bring epochal change:

Scenario 1: Bob Dole wins; a liberal retires (most likely 76-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court’s oldest and most liberal member); Dole replaces him with a conservative; and suddenly we have the most conservative Court in modern history.

Scenario 2: President Clinton wins (as seems far more probable); a conservative retires (most likely 72-year-old Chief Justice William Rehnquist); the president replaces him (or elevates Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and then replaces her) with a liberal or moderate liberal; and suddenly we have the most liberal Court since (at least) Earl Warren.

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Monsters and Boy Scouts

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

At first blush, accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s pending motion for permission to give media interviews-including one with a famous TV journalist, to be chosen from a gaggle of eager applicants who have already auditioned for the opportunity-might seem an occasion for revulsion.

Here’s how the prosecution characterized the motion in a seething Aug. 29 court response filed with Chief Judge Richard Matsch, of the U.S. District Court in Denver:

"McVeigh… seeks this court’s authorization of an extraordinary attempt to manipulate the news media to produce a favorable impact on the potential jury pool. According to the motion, defendant’s counsel has already met with such well-known television reporters as Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and others-and now wants to ‘choose among’ them the one least likely to ‘exploit’ an interview of Mr. McVeigh, ‘brow-beat’ the defendant, or ask Mr. McVeigh questions ‘he cannot answer.’… Mr. McVeigh also has ‘interviewed’ representatives of major national newspapers, and now wants to choose among them as well…. And he wants to make a similar selection from among local television and newspaper reporters."

But the motion should be granted. (Indeed, even the prosecution’s response, which exudes distaste for the motion, stops short of explicitly urging that it be denied.) Meanwhile, the media should spurn any conditions restricting what they can say about McVeigh before or after airing any interviews.

This spectacle raises two distinct questions, one of law and one of journalistic ethics:

Should courts allow McVeigh (who is in jail awaiting trial) and other accused monsters to give media interviews when their primary purpose is obviously to curry sympathy with the jury pool?

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Pandering for President

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Now that the conventions are over, it’s time to ponder which of the major-party candidates has taken the lead in proposing the worst ideas affecting the legal system and civil liberties.

Both President Bill Clinton and challenger Bob Dole have gone to great lengths to pander to various voter groups in this area.

BAD CLINTON IDEAS

• Banning gun sales to persons with records of domestic violence or abuse.

This is typical of the many tiny initiatives with which Clinton has salted his campaign to target carefully selected groups-especially feminists and other women.

This particular proposal trivializes gun control because it would have so little impact on domestic violence, which typically involves beatings and stabbings, not shootings. It makes little more sense than, say, barring spouse-abusers from buying beer or kitchen knives. If the president has no more muscular ideas than this for curbing gun violence, he can’t be very serious.

• Reflexive opposition to all efforts to curb excessive litigation.

While the costs and benefits of various litigation reforms arc debatable, and while some Republican proposals go too far, President Clinton and his party are so dependent on trial-lawyer money that they fight every proposal to attack the problem of was and abusive litigation.

The president opposed both a well-balanced bill (which Congress enacted over his veto) to curb those securities class actions in which the prime movers and beneficiaries are contingent-fee lawyers and, more recently, a modest tort reform bill quite similar to one that Clinton had endorsed in the 1980s.

• Stripping protections from defendants.

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The Norplant Option

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

Slate.com

Now that Congress and President Clinton have opted to use the threat of utter destitution to dissuade poor teen-agers and women from having children on the public dole, it’s time to revive a more humane, and perhaps more effective, proposal with the same objective.

This idea surfaced briefly and spectacularly in 1990, when the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested in an editorial that perhaps some welfare mothers should be “offered an increased benefit” if they would agree to practice effective birth control–specifically, to use the then-new Norplant contraceptive, which prevents pregnancy for five years after being implanted under the skin of the upper arm.

An uproar followed. The editorial writers–who had insensitively suggested a desire to reduce births of poor black babies in particular–were savaged by many Inquirer staffers and others as racist advocates of eugenics, even of “genocide.” They also caught it from some abortion-rights zealots, who are suspicious of any government efforts to influence reproductive choices, and from conservatives, who think the only proper way to discourage teen pregnancy is to preach abstinence. The newspaper abjectly apologized for a “misguided and wrongheaded editorial opinion.” And ever since, the whole subject has been taboo.

But it’s still a good idea, for poor girls and women themselves, and for the rest of us. Millions of babies are being born to poor teen-agers so lacking in elementary skills, work habits, and self-discipline that they are unlikely to be either responsible parents or self-supporting providers. Many of these babies grow up in squalor and themselves become dependent denizens of the welfare culture.

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Give Norplant A Chance

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Now that Congress and President Bill Clinton have opted to use the threat of utter destitution to dissuade poor teen-agers and women from having children on the public dole, it’s time to revive a far more humane, and perhaps more effective, proposal with the same objective.

This idea surfaced briefly and spectacularly in 1990, when the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested in an editorial that perhaps some welfare mothers should be "offered an increased benefit" if they would agree to produce effective birth control-specifically, to use the then new Norplant contraceptive, which prevents pregnancy for five years after being implanted under the skin of the upper arm.

An uproar followed. The editorial writers-who had insensitively suggested a desire to reduce births of poor black babies in particular-were savaged by many Inquirer staffers and others as racist advocates of eugenics, even of "genocide." They also caught it from some abortion rights zealots-who bridle at any suggestion that the government should seek to influence anybody’s reproductive choices by means more potent than education and contraceptive giveaways-and from conservatives- who think the only proper way to discourage teen pregnancy is to preach abstinence.

Amid national publicity, the newspaper abjectly apologized 11 days later for having printed a "misguided and wrongheaded editorial opinion."

And ever since, the whole subject has been taboo, at least in the mainstream press. Although some slate and local officials, including former Gov. William Donald Schaefer of Maryland, have proposed various Norplant incentives, few if any on the national scene have dared mention the words welfare and Norplant in the same sentence at least in combination with incentive.

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A Constitutional Suicide Pact?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

"Defendants concede, for purposes of this [summary judgment] motion, and for no other purposes, that … in publishing, marketing, advertising and distributing Hit Man and Silencers, defendants intended and had knowledge that their publications would be used, upon receipt, by criminals and would-be criminals to plan and execute the crime of murder for hire, in the manner set forth in the publications."

So stipulated Paladin Enterprises Inc., publisher of a book (Hit Man) that was used by a real hired killer, James Perry, to plan and execute three murders in Silver Spring, Md. Subtitled A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, the book describes itself as "an instruction book on murder."

None of this has stopped media groups and free speech advocates-including the National Association of Broadcasters, the Association of American Publishers, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists-from rushing to the defense of Paladin’s First Amendment right to publish its murder manual with impunity.

While Perry sits on death row, these groups have joined in an amicus brief seeking summary judgment for Paladin and its owner, Peder Lund, in damage suits brought by survivors of the three victims. In March 1993, Perry shot Mildred Horn and her son’s nurse, Janice Saunders, three times each in the eyes (as advised by Hit Man); he smothered Horn’s quadriplegic eight-year-old son, Trevor, and pulled his breathing tube. The killer, who followed some 20 tips from Hit Man, was hired by the boy’s father, Lawrence Horn, who had hoped to inherit $1.7 million that his son had received in a malpractice settlement.