Ken Starr

Kenneth Starr (born July 21, 1946) was an American judge who was appointed to the Office of the Independent Counsel to investigate the Whitewater land transactions by President Clinton and later the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Prior to his appointment as Independent Counsel, Starr had been a federal judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and United States Solicitor General, under President George H.W. Bush. According to many, he was a very likely nomination for the United States Supreme Court. As a judge, Starr was respected by both political parties and was considered to be a moderate conservative with a broad view of freedom of the press.

In 1995 Starr was appointed by a three-judge panel to continue the Whitewater investigation, replacing Robert Fiske, who had been specially appointed by the Attorney General prior to the re-enactment of the Independent Counsel law. His powers were very broad, and he was given the right to subpoena nearly anyone he felt may have information relevant to the scandal.

Though his judicial reputation earned him inital popularity in the investigation, Starr's service soon turned controversial, especially after his powers were further expanded to investigate the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Republicans saw him as incompetent and too trusting of the president. Democrats saw him as a repressed political zealot on a mission to remove Clinton. This controversy threatened to turn the prosecutor into the prosecuted when Starr's office acknowledged that it had leaked grand jury testimony in violation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e).

After resigning his office following five years of service, Starr returned to the appellate lawyer business where the fact that he never lost a case as independent counsel has earned him high regard as an attorney. Starr is now a partner at Kirkland and Ellis, specializing in complex litigation. He is one of the lead attorneys in a class-action lawsuit filed by a coalition of liberal and conservative groups (including the ACLU and the NRA) against the regulations created by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known informally as McCain-Feingold Act. In the case, Starr has argued that the law is an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech. On April 6, 2004, he was appointed dean of Pepperdine University's School of Law.