"No one, be he King or President, is above the law," federal judge Susan Webber Wright wrote in her ruling Wednesday on the sexual harassment suit against President Clinton.
Why then, did Wright rule that while the pretrial proceedings can begin, any trial should be delayed until Clinton is out of office?
"If no man is above the law, why does the president get an automatic stay?" asks conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein. "Justice delayed is justice denied."
But Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein, defending Wright's ruling as a "fair compromise," argues that Wright is not saying the "president is above the law, but that the law applies differently to different people in different situations."
Among examples he cites is the law allowing members of the armed forces to postpone civil suits against them while on active duty.
Wright, who was nominated to the court in Little Rock by President Bush in 1989, filed her 22-page ruling with historic references to ancient disputes between kings and parliaments and debates over presidential immunity at the Constitutional Convention more than 200 years ago.
In the end, she said Clinton was not entitled to absolute immunity for "alleged acts (that) took place before he was president" and while "he was not acting in the scope of executive authority."
But Wright also sided with Clinton's lawyers, ruling that "he should not have to devote his time and effort to the defense of this case at trial while in office. This is not a case in which any necessity exists to rush to trial."
In a setback for Clinton, she also saw no reason to delay lawyers from both sides from taking sworn statements from witnesses, including Clinton, on Paula Jones' allegations that he propositioned her in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991.
Wright wrote: "This approach eliminates the problem that witnesses may die, disappear, become incapacitated or become forgetful due to the passage of time."
Rothstein says Clinton got "half a loaf" in terms of avoiding adverse publicity. "Pretrial proceedings aren't likely to get the same kind of attention that a trial would."
The judge could put any sworn statements under seal, although they could leak.
The risk for Clinton, he adds, "would be any temptation to shade the truth in a sworn statement if anything embarrassing happened. That's what gets people in trouble in Washington, from Watergate to Iran-contra. Not the underlying situation itself, but lying under oath."
Fein, a Justice Department official under President Reagan, dismissed Wright's ruling as "too deferential" to the president and "at war with itself."
"She seems to feel that a trial would disrupt and distract the president, but obviously he's going to be alerted to and involved in any pretrial proceedings."
Fein also questions the idea that any civil lawsuit against the president could "bring the government to a halt. . . . We're not in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis anymore. The president doesn't have his finger on the button. Nukes aren't pointed at us anymore."
Jones' lawyer Joseph Cammerata refused to characterize Wright's ruling but said "given the nature" of pretrial proceedings and Clinton's "re-election prospects" in 1996, "there may not be any delay at all" if the case comes to trial.
Clinton's lawyer Carl Rauh, saying an appeal is likely, said in a short statement that allowing the pretrial proceedings to go forward "is inconsistent with the basic premise of the decision."
