Atlanta, GA - The Arkansas Supreme Court today ruled in favor of the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) in its efforts to hold President Clinton accountable for his unethical behavior by ruling that the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct must act on the Foundation’s September 1998 ethics complaint against Mr. Clinton. The Court ruled in a unanimous opinion that the Ethics Committee must commence proceedings by serving both SLF’s complaint and the referral by Judge Susan Webber Wright on the President. President Clinton must respond to the complaints within thirty days.

“This is a victory not only for SLF, but also for the nation’s legal community and the millions of Americans who still believe that lawyers who lie under oath have forfeited their right to practice law,” said SLF president Matthew Glavin. “Today, the highest court in the President’s home state agreed that the process should move forward as it would have with any other lawyer.”

SLF filed its original complaint on September 15, 1998 alleging that President Clinton’s untruthful testimony in the Paula Jones case and during the investigation of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was serious enough to require disciplinary action by the Arkansas State Bar against the President.

The executive director of the Committee, James Neal, has said that even the most complicated complaint should take no more than six months to resolve. Yet, the SLF complaint has been in the Committee’s hands for sixteen months with no action coming from it. Mr. Glavin noted that the unusual delay in the Clinton case may have drawn the attention of the justices.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Mr. Glavin, “and I think the Court would like to know what the Committee has been doing with this complaint for nearly a year and a half.”

“If Bill Clinton is allowed to subvert the legal process and flaunt the law, then lawyers everywhere can be judged by the inaction of the Arkansas State Bar to police the profession,” Glavin said.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation , founded in 1976, is an Atlanta based public law firm. For more information visit www.southeasternlegal.org.

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