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
(Editor’s note: Justice Weis-berger recently announced that after 44 years on the bench, the last five as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, that he will be retiring either at the end of this year or next July. This is the second of two parts. The first appeared last week)
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JUSTICE JOSEPH R. WEISBERGER: ‘Can a great nation preserve its influence if it manufactures nothing…’
PBN: From your vantage point you have a unique view of society. Have you seen changes within our society for the better, for the worse?
WEIBSERGER 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.
What was the most significant event of your lifetime?
World War II. I think World War II was a conflict we were unable to avoid because of the personality of Adolph Hitler, and the ambitions of the ruling class in Japan. I don’t think we could avoid that. In many ways, of course, World War II was the result of World War I. There would never had been an Adolph Hitler had there been no World War I. He would have lived and died undoubtedly in the obscurity that he deserved, but the Weimar Republic, the horrors of the inflation, the horrors of the depression produced Adolph Hitler. And the treaty of Versailles gave him perhaps the basis for his popularity in restoring Germany to what he thought was its appropriate preeminence, and to what the Germans thought was its appropriate preeminence.
I think you have to go back to World War I to get the causes of World War II. In my lifetime, obviously, the most significant event was World War II.
In terms of Rhode Island what do you see as the most significant event you’ve witnessed?
In terms of our political structure, I think maybe one of the most significant events has been the loss of influence of the major political parties. I think in terms of national elections, the endorsement of a political party no longer has the force that it once did. I think that you find, when it comes to major office, Congress, Senate, you find individuals being pre-eminent rather than political parties, even though they are running under a political party label. But the ability of the party to control and discipline its members has largely disappeared. I also believe that in Rhode Island the influence of the Republican Party has steadily decreased, as you can see from the legislature. The representation of Republicans in the legislature is so small as to be almost insignificant. That’s another very significant development. Big development.
Another tremendous development from the point of view of the business community is the decline in manufacturing. When I was a little boy, growing up Rhode Island hummed from one end to the other with textile mills, rubber manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, machine tool manufacturing, large corporate enterprises. Brown & Sharpe, for example. The textile industry has virtually disappeared. The jewelry industry, which I think was among the greatest in the United States. Providence I think was the costume jewelry capital of the world when I was growing up. That has largely disappeared. This is a national phenomenon. It is not just limited to Rhode Island. Rhode Island’s mills moved south, but then they moved overseas. I do worry about the future of the United States. Can a great nation preserve its influence if it manufactures nothing, and simply sends messages quickly by e-mail, and consists of retail stores. I would be very worried about that.
I wonder if you don’t manufacture anything. The Untied States became great because of its ability to manufacture enormous numbers of products. World War II for example began by (our)losing a good part of the Pacific Fleet the first day of the war, December 7, 1941, but we were in a position to build another. I’m not certain we could do that today. Shipyards are few and far between. It’s less expensive to build ships somewhere else. But if national security demands that you build them here, do we have that capacity. Admiral Mahan, who was the author of the Influence of Seapower Upon History, one of the great, most thoughtful authors in that field, warned that a great navy could not be maintained without a very, very large and diverse merchant fleet. We do not have a large and diverse merchant fleet.
There are many signs of peril, I think, in regard to our economy, and the future of our business community.
