Newly released documents from the files of a late justice show how the Supreme Court was concerned with how to avoid appearing political when it ruled unanimously against President Bill Clinton’s attempts to avoid lawsuits in the White House 25 years ago.
The decades-old documents provide a fresh look at how worried the court was in the late 1990s about being cast as yet another political institution in a Washington that was becoming increasingly divided among partisan lines.
The documents help paint an almost quaint picture of the court, which, more than two decades later – and with nearly an entirely different membership from the one represented in the documents – has steadily been viewed by the public as becoming more entrenched in politics and culture war issues along predictable lines.
The internal documents belonging to Justice John Paul Stevens, a leading liberal who retired in 2010, were released Tuesday by the Library of Congress. The new documents cover about 20 years of his 35 years on the bench, with the files offering a view into the usually secretive innerworkings of the court.
One of Stevens’ more memorable written opinions came in Clinton v. Jones, with the court ruling unanimously that the then-president could not invoke presidential immunity to avoid a civil lawsuit for alleged sexual misconduct brought by Paula Jones, who said Clinton sexually harassed her when he was governor of Arkansas.
The final decision was a strong rebuke of arguments put forth by Clinton’s lawyers, who stressed that because of the demands of the nation’s highest office, the litigation should be delayed until after he left office.
The documents released Tuesday show that some of the justices were keen on sticking together on the outcome of the case and how at least one justice stressed during deliberations that the court steer clear…
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