Name: Justice Joseph R. Weisberger
Position: Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
Background: Has served as chief justice for the last five years; was acting chief justice for two years. He was initially appointed to the state Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1978. Presiding justice of the state Superior Court from 1972-1978, he was first appointed to the Superior Court in 1956, after two terms as a state Senator from Glocester.
Education: Graduated from Brown University Magna Cum Laude in 1947, and is a graduate of the Harvard University School of Law.
Affiliations: Past chairman of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association; past chairman of the National Conference of State Trial Judges; Past member of the House of Delegates, American Bar Association; Past member, Board of Directors, National Center for State Courts; faculty member, National Judicial College, 1966 to present.
Honors: Recipient Erwin Griswold Award for Excellence in Teaching, National Judicial College, 1989; Recipient of Herbert Harley Award, American Judicature Society, 1989; Recipient Goodrich Award for Service to Rhode Island Taxpayers, Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, 1995.
Age: 80
Note: Justice Weisberger recently announced his plans to retire after 50 years of government service in Rhode Island, 45 of them as a judge, 22 of them on the Supreme Court, the last 5 as Chief Justice.
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JUSTICE JOSEPH R. WEISBERGER: ‘I think human nature does not change. I do not think we have any better understanding of human nature than Aristotle did.
PBN: You had embarked on a political career, town moderator, state senator before your appointment to the bench?
Weisberger: I was elected to the state Senate in 1952, my first term I was elected minority leader. Then I was appointed to the Superior Court in 1956. And it is true I was town moderator in East Providence.
As the story goes, whether true or not, one of the things that precipitated your appointment to the bench was concern among Democrats that you would be a pretty forceful gubernatorial candidate?
I honestly don’t believe that was the motivation, I don’t believe it was. At that time I had no immediate intention to run for governor because Christopher DelSesto was the announced candidate – he was older than I – I felt he would be a good candidate for the Republican party. I had no intention of opposing him for that post. I had no immediate intention of running for office. I don’t know what could be in the minds of Democratic leaders as to some time in the future, but certainly in the 1952 election I had no intention to run for governor.
If you had not followed a career in the judiciary would you have gone the political route, eventually running for governor?
Well, I think I probably would have continued in the Senate, tried to anyway. I was elected twice. I suppose if the opportunity was offered I might have tried to run for statewide office, in all likelihood. But not in 1952. The way things worked out Christopher DelSesto ran twice. I don’t think I would have opposed him as a candidate. My guess is – and it’s only a guess – the opportunity might have opened up in 1956.
In your years on the bench how have you seen things change in the judiciary?
When I became a member of the Superior Court we consisted of 11 justices. There are now 22. So the court has doubled in size. The nature of the cases was significantly different. For example, it was almost unknown for us to have a case of sexual abuse of children arising from family members. That was remarkable. I think I recall in my first 15 years on the bench, one case involving a charge of incest. Now, we are receiving every year a significant number of cases involving sexual abuse of children by family members. That’s a shocking development.
Is that because of a change in our moral character or the result of people reporting these crimes more readily?
You may well be right that those incidents occurred but were not reported. You may well be right. I don’t know the answer to that question. It appears to me to be unlikely that human nature would change so significantly in a matter of say 15 or 20 years. So it may well be those incidents took place and were not reported, but we were not receiving that type of litigation in our court system.
Also, another change has been the enormous rise in the number of drug related cases. I won’t say that in 1956 we didn’t have any drug cases, we did. But the numbers were far fewer than they later became. In the 1960s, drug use began to increase almost exponentially, and with that drug related crimes in regard to things like robbery, burglary, breaking and entering. In many instances a person is using drugs and is attempting to obtain drugs or attempting to obtain money to buy drugs, so drugs have become, you might say, the catalyst, one of the main catalysts of criminal activity. My first years they were not that significant. Of course, we always had alcohol-related problems, but things like heroin, cocaine seemed to come on the scene beginning in the 1960s in great numbers.
In terms of the business community, looking at the business cases that have come before the court, has there been a change in the nature of those?
I would say, no. Contract disputes have always been with us. Labor relations disputes have been with us. The rise of organized labor in the public sector has increased. I think when I became a judge, many public employees were not unionized, but they later became unionized and therefore litigation arose in regard to contracts, illegal strikes and matters of that kind. That was quite lively by the ’60s, and other contract disputes, unfair competition were present when I first became a judge.
I can recall around 1958, I was assisting on the criminal calendar and it was customary then if you did not have a case from the criminal calendar you send in for the miscellaneous calendar for a case, and since I was on the criminal calendar, I said can you send me a short case. They sent me a short case. Sixty five days later we resolved the case. It was one for unfair competition, the use of allegedly secret formulas that were used in the sizing of textiles.
We hear often from the business community concern about the increase in litigation against companies. Have you seen that from your end?
We have had some significant litigation. We have had some asbestos litigation. I can recall one case involving the McGregor Helmet Co. There was a question of the causing of a young man becoming a quadriplegic as a result of a head tackle and the alleged cause of his terrible injury was the fact that the helmet was so constructed, the nose guard and so on, that the neck was not allowed to flex and consequently there was an injury to the spine. It resulted in a very significant judgment against McGregor. And, of course, we have the usual personal injury cases arising out of automobile accidents. And we have our standard workers’ compensation cases that are a wide variety of injuries. However, those cases, I think are leveling off under the management of the Workers Compensation Court and the new statute. Ten years ago workers compensation cases were mounting and now the court is handling those cases within generally 30 days of the time they are filed to go pre-trial, and if they are not resolved at pre-trial they will go to trial within another 60 days. The court is working very smoothly, and has done a wonderful job stabilizing workers compensation.
From your vantage point you have a unique view of society. Have you seen changes within our society for the better, for the worse?
I think human nature does not change. I do not think that we have any better understanding of human nature than Aristotle did. Most of us will never achieve his understanding of human nature. I think that our technological advances have not been matched by our ability to understand, control or guide human nature. We have made enormous strides in moving heavy weights from one point to another in very rapid time and now we have matched that by being able to communicate instantaneously material that perhaps need not have been communicated at all. But we are able to do it very rapidly. Yet, the content, the content of what we are communicating instantaneously is certainly not superior to what Shakespeare wrote out in longhand with a quill pen. It is not even comparable. I’m not saying that our literary talents have disappeared. I am simply saying we can not exceed and have not exceeded the great literary, artistic, intellectual contributions made during the Renaissance, or even prior to that in the ancient world. I think we have developed great technology, but behind that technology, human achievement at least in controlling, guiding behavior has not improved.
I don’t think we know any more about how to maintain world peace than the very well informed members of the ruling class in August of 1914, when they plunged the world into a war that was unnecessary, that never should have been fought, with no reason behind it. And it is frightening, because these were well-educated people. Europe was ruled by families that were all related. The Kaiser was the grandson of Queen Victoria. She died in his arms by the way. His uncle was Edward II of whom he was enormously jealous. The czar was also the Kaiser’s cousin. So you have these people who are trained to govern with many very, very well qualified diplomats in the service, and they went into a war that destroyed royalty in Europe, certainly something none of them would have wanted to do. They would have been held by a set of certain circumstances that would have been a cause of war into something that completely changed life as it had been known, not only in Europe but throughout the world. I don’t think we are that much smarter than these people, but our technology can destroy us if we cannot control our own behavior.
(to be continued next week)
