WASHINGTON, DC/LITTLE ROCK: Following up on its pledge to ensure attorney accountability, Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) today filed a mandamus action with the Arkansas Supreme Court, requesting that the court compel the state’s legal ethics enforcement body to begin disciplinary proceedings against attorney Bill Clinton.

SLF filed its original complaint* in September 1998 with the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct, which polices attorney ethics in the state, based on alleged misrepresentation under oath by attorney Clinton in the Paula Jones matter. Federal district court Judge Susan Webber Wright then issued a contempt citation in April this year against President Clinton, stating, “It is simply not acceptable to employ deceptions and falsehoods in an attempt to obstruct the judicial process . . . [n]evertheless, the President’s . . . conduct in this case, coming as it did from a member of the bar and the chief law enforcement officer of this Nation, was without justification and undermined the integrity of the judicial system.”

Despite clear rules and procedures which compel the Arkansas committee to issue a formal complaint against President Clinton, particularly in light of the federal court contempt citation, the Arkansas committee has to date taken no disciplinary action.

“With the filing of the mandamus action today, we hope to kick-start the necessary investigatory process,” said L. Lynn Hogue, SLF legal counsel and constitutional law professor. “As officers of the court, lawyers swear an oath to tell the truth, defend the Constitution, and live by the laws that govern us all, and when a lawyer becomes an elected official, that duty is raised to a higher level because public confidence in the legal system becomes an issue.”

“The failure of the Arkansas legal ethics body to take the required steps to discipline attorney William Jefferson Clinton, in the face of a federal judge’s contempt citation, is tantamount to dereliction of duty,” said Matthew J. Glavin, SLF president. “When a lawyer violates his professional oath, lies before a court of law, and undermines public confidence in the rule of law, that lawyer should be punished.”

The Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public interest law firm founded in 1976, this year won a U.S. Supreme Court decision against the Clinton administration’s plan to use statistical sampling for congressional apportionment in Census 2000.

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