Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 42 (1997)

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722

CLINTON v. JONES

Breyer, J., concurring in judgment

ident no longer in office, where distraction is no longer a consideration, so can the former justify, not immunity, but a postponement, in the case of a sitting President.

III

The majority points to the fact that private plaintiffs have brought civil damages lawsuits against a sitting President only three times in our Nation's history; and it relies upon the threat of sanctions to discourage, and "the court's discretion" to manage, such actions so that "interference with the President's duties would not occur." Ante, at 708. I am less sanguine. Since 1960, when the last such suit was filed, the number of civil lawsuits filed annually in Federal District Courts has increased from under 60,000 to about 240,000, see Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Statistical Tables for the Federal Judiciary 27 (1995); Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts—1960, p. 224 (1961); the number of federal district judges has increased from 233 to about 650, see Administrative Office of United States Courts, Judicial Business of United States Courts 7 (1994); Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts— 1960, supra, at 205; the time and expense associated with both discovery and trial have increased, see, e. g., Bell, Varner, & Gottschalk, Automatic Disclosure in Discovery— The Rush To Reform, 27 Ga. L. Rev. 1, 9-11 (1992); see also S. Rep. No. 101-416, p. 1 (1990); Judicial Improvements Act of 1990, Pub. L. 101-650, 104 Stat. 5089; an increasingly complex economy has led to increasingly complex sets of statutes, rules, and regulations that often create potential liability, with or without fault. And this Court has now made clear that such lawsuits may proceed against a sitting President. The consequence, as the Court warned in Fitzgerald, is that a sitting President, given "the visibility of his office," could well become "an easily identifiable target for suits for civil damages," 457 U. S., at 753. The threat of sanctions

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