Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...conviction for suborning perjury if all the principals agree it didn't happen. And again, much would turn on context and precise words. If the two men just gave her general advice to be discreet--not advising her about what to say in a deposition--it would be perfectly legal. Even if they were referring to the deposition, it would depend on how specific the advice to misrepresent the truth was. "It's not suborning perjury to say you shouldn't volunteer something," says Northwestern University law professor Paul Robinson. There are reports that Lewinsky said on tape that...
...Supreme Court ruled for the first time last year, in Paula Jones v. William Clinton, that a President can be sued in a civil matter. Some legal scholars read into that decision a willingness to make the President answerable to criminal prosecutions as well. But others argue that the Founding Fathers intended the Impeachment Clause to be the only mechanism for prosecuting a President. As a practical matter, Starr is more likely to present evidence of illegal activity by Clinton to Congress for impeachment proceedings than to a federal court for trial...
...problems: having to explain to the kids over Cheerios not the significance of a visit to Cuba by the most famous celibate in the world but just why it is that a perky anchorperson is talking about something called oral sex. The second, perhaps more lasting problem is the legal precedent set by this ballooning investigation. Until last week, the criticism of independent counsel Kenneth Starr went largely to his unchecked power. Former Republican independent counsel Joseph diGenova calls the whole setup "a constitutional monstrosity." Now we watch as a prosecutor gunning for a President uses tactics...
...that point, what had seemed like foolhardy grandstanding suddenly looked like a clever legal maneuver. The program called Explorer, Microsoft lawyers explained, no longer exists as an independent entity. Microsoft engineers have woven ever larger chunks of Explorer code into the fabric of the Windows operating system in the form of those .DLL files--miniprograms that link PC applications to the Net. The more intertwined Explorer and Windows become, the more fluidly Windows will adapt to the Web--which is why rivals are so eager to stop Microsoft from tying the two together...
DIED. JAY MONAHAN, 42, NBC News legal analyst and husband of Today show host Katie Couric; of cancer; in New York City...