Justices Are Urged to Give President Lawsuit Immunity

WASHINGTON — Justice Department lawyers on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to grant the nation’s chief executive temporary immunity from lawsuits, arguing that no judge or private litigant should be empowered to control the daily schedule of the president of the United States.

“The presidency’s most precious commodity is time . . . [and] the demands placed on [his time] are unceasing,” acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger said in the brief.

“A rule that subjects sitting presidents to suits in state and federal courts across the country” would enmesh a judge or judges “in a politically charged and potentially extended oversight of the president’s schedule,” he said.

This is both bad public policy and a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches, Dellinger argued. “The public’s interest in the president’s unimpaired performance of his duties must take precedence over a private litigant’s desire to obtain redress for legal wrongs,” he said.

The brief responds to the $700,000 damage suit filed against President Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who says she was sexually harassed in a Little Rock, Ark., hotel room in 1991.