During a panel session Friday at the School of Law, three of the most prominent lawyers from the Clinton impeachment process reflected on their personal experiences in the midst of the presidential crisis.
Tom Griffith, Brett Kavanaugh and Abbe Lowell had widely varying roles in the process and expressed decidedly different views of the appropriateness and historical meaning of Bill Clinton's impeachment.
Lowell, the chief counsel representing the Democrats in the House of Representatives, said the impeachment on one count each of perjury and obstruction of justice was misguided. "The House of Representatives never had an impeachment strategy," said Lowell, explaining that Republicans were pressuring Clinton to leave office. "They had a resignation strategy."
Brett Kavanaugh, who worked in the independent counsel's office under Kenneth Starr, Law '73, said the charges were merited.
He joined the team during Starr's last year as U.S. solicitor general and, during the summer of 1998, Kavanaugh was involved in writing the Starr Report. "[The basis for this investigation] was a deep belief in the sanctity of the law," he said. "You can't go into a legal case and lie under oath.... That's what we thought this case was all about."
Although perjury should be considered an impeachable offense, Kavanaugh said, a president does not necessarily need to be removed from office as a result of perjurious statements.
Griffith, chief legal counsel to the Senate, was nonpartisan during the case, but he said Friday that the Senate could have justifiably convicted Clinton. "I'm not certain that [the Senate has] done right by [saying] that perjury and obstruction of justice don't rise to [the level of removable offenses]," he said.
However, Lowell contended-both Friday and in earlier arguments before the House Judiciary Committee-that the charges against Clinton were not impeachment-worthy.
Moreover, he said the members of the House should have been reminded of the incredible importance of their charge, and acted accordingly. "In 1974, [during the Watergate scandal], the Democrats and Republicans lived up to that expectation," said Lowell, who was not Clinton's personal attorney.
Kavanaugh had mixed reviews of Congress's performance. "[They] decided to defer looking at [the Clinton-Lewinsky case]... until Ken Starr had gathered all the facts," he said, adding that "Congress never should have released [the Starr Report] without checking it beforehand."
Griffith said the Senate's first duty was to respect the House of Representatives by formally receiving the articles and holding a trial. Although such a duty might seem obvious, Griffith said a common question among senators was, "What is the Senate's requirement here?" In Griffith's mind, the Senate was mandated by the Constitution to receive the articles.
He said the Senate's other duty was to protect its reputation. "I think there were heroes.... There were things that [party leaders] Trent Lott and Tom Daschle did that were courageous," he said.
Toward the end of the discussion, Lowell opined that political dynamics dictate that the bipartisanship necessary to remove a president would never actually yield a conviction in the Senate. "Partisanship will allow [the charges] to get to the House," said Lowell. "If it's ever bipartisan, the president will resign."
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