Clinton v. Jones
United States Supreme Court case
Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting president of the United States has no immunity from civil law litigation, in federal court, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office. In particular, there is no temporary immunity and thus no delay of federal cases until the president leaves office.
Background of the case
On May 6, 1994, former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a sexual harassment suit against U.S. president Bill Clinton and former Arkansas State Police Officer Danny Ferguson. She claimed that on May 8, 1991, Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned her. David Brock had written, in the January 1994 issue of The American Spectator, that an Arkansas state employee named "Paula" had offered to be Clinton's mistress. According to the story, Ferguson had escorted Jones to Clinton's hotel room, stood guard, and overheard Jones say that she would not mind being Clinton's mistress.
The initial suit, Jones v. Clinton, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Jones, represented by attorneys Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert K. Davis, sought civil damages from the President.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Clinton v. Jones” is united States Supreme Court case. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Clinton, Jones and United, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5134291. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1994 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clinton v. Jones” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.