The Law: Rating St. Clair

His immediate plans call for ten days of golf at the Eastward Ho Country Club and rest at his modest cottage in nearby South Chatham, Mass. After that, the “Silver Fox” plans to return to the firm of Hale & Dorr and his old corner suite on the 33rd floor at 28 State Street in downtown Boston. His colleagues are ready to welcome him back warmly. Though many did not sympathize with his client, most Boston lawyers agree that James Draper St. Clair performed well, even brilliantly at times, in the defense of Richard M. Nixon.

“Nixon’s whole defense was based on the idea that the Watergate affair would blow by, that something else would come up and the issue would be forgotten,” says Stanley Rudman, one of Boston’s noted trial lawyers. “St. Clair certainly succeeded in buying him a lot of time.”

More important, says Professor Henry Monaghan of Boston University’s law school, “St. Clair in effect won the argument that an impeachable offense had to be a criminal offense. He managed to convince the House Judiciary Committee that, psychologically, no one was going to vote for impeachment unless he was convinced that obstruction of justice had occurred. St. Clair made the House see it the President’s way.”

A Marathon. There is respect too from a onetime J.F.K. aide for the way St. Clair carried his enormous work load. Says Former Massachusetts Bar Association President Richard K. Donahue: “Christ, he was pursuing about nine different actions at one time. If you look at his court calendar, it’s mystifying that he was able to make as many effective appearances as he did. It was a marathon performance under the most intense pressure and in the full X-ray glare of the media.” For all this, St. Clair had resigned from his law firm and served at a $42,500 annual salary—far below the estimated $200,000 he would have earned in Boston.

As might be expected in an argumentative profession, there is no lack of lawyers who find grounds for criticism. Some of them think that it was hard to tell at times whether St. Clair felt that his lawyer’s loyalties were owed to Richard M. Nixon or to the office of the presidency. But he made amends in his last days on the job when he discovered that Nixon had known about the Watergate cover-up since June 23, 1972; he then became a prime mover in prompting the President’s resignation.

Many of St. Clair’s Boston colleagues wonder why he took on the case if he did not have full access to all the relevant information, especially when what was already known was so damning. After all, they point out, Solicitor General Robert Bork declined the job precisely for that reason. Criminal Lawyer Joseph Oteri has a theory to explain the lapse: “St. Clair is a gentleman, and he expects that when someone gives you his word, that person’s telling the truth. Now how the hell can you sit the President of the U.S. down, grill him and tell him, ‘You’re lying, you bastard, come clean!’?”

St. Clair himself ducks any explanation. “The question presumes that I didn’t ask for full access to all the evidence considered to be relevant. I really wouldn’t want to go any farther, because it verges on areas of my relationship with my client.” St. Clair insists that he did not listen to the tapes himself for a simple reason: “It would have taken several months of full-time effort.”

In retrospect, the calm Republican has no regrets about defending Nixon: “In all likelihood, I’d do it again.” But won’t ordinary legal work seem a bit unexciting now? “There’ll be some aspects that will be anticlimactic, but they’ll be welcome,” says James St. Clair. “After seven months, a little anticlimax would go a long way.”