QUESTION OF PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY IS THORNY AND SERIOUS

The claims of sexual harassment that have been made by Paula Jones against President Clinton raise serious and thorny legal issues apart from the question of what happened in a hotel room in May 1991. So the U.S. Supreme Court, whose job it is to untangle legal briar patches, listened this week to lawyers for Jones and the president.

Some of the justices virtually scoffed at the notion that a president doesn't have time for what might be a slug of civil lawsuits, providing the High Court holds that a sitting president isn't immune from such litigation.

And there seemed to be equal skepticism from the bench that presidents have a constitutional guarantee of immunity from civil lawsuits except within some fairly strict boundaries (see excerpts from The Wall Street Journal's Jan. 14 editorial, "Above the Law," below).

There are two large areas of concern. One is purely a legal consideration. The other springs from the well of common sense. And it is the latter that most Americans will rely upon in forming their own conclusions about this particular case.

The legal question: At issue is whether a president must submit to the legal process of a civil lawsuit when it pertains to alleged events that occurred before he became president. In recent years, the questionable -- and possibly illegal -- activities of presidents while they are in office have been relegated to special prosecutors and congressional panels of inquiry. There is, in fact, a process for ferreting out information about the alleged wrongdoing of a president while he is in the White House.

But the Jones case against the president is clouded by the fact that her sexual harassment allegedly occurred before Clinton became president and while he was still governor of Arkansas, which leads to the second area of concern.

The common-sense question: Jones has repeatedly stated that her only objective in pressing her claim is to clear her good name. She seems to overlook the fact that she is the one who sought the spotlight. And she waited from May 1991 until 1994 to file her lawsuit. A good many Americans question why she held a press conference to talk about her ordeal and why she waited so long to seek a legal remedy.

These questions, of course, don't constitute a legal brief. And the Supreme Court has finer points of constitutional law to deal with. But the thicket of how much -- if any -- immunity a president enjoys in situations like this is a tough one to wade through.