By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — In a ceremony that was at once stately and understated, Paul Suttell was sworn in as Rhode Island’s 51st Supreme Court chief justice Thursday by Gov. Donald Carcieri.

As Suttell’s wife, Mary, held the Bible on which he placed his hand, and his children, Will and Grace, looked on, Suttell swore to “administer justice without respect to personage and with equal rights to the poor and the rich.”
As he administered the oath, Carcieri told Suttell, “you have all the good will of our citizens throughout the state.”
“It is so important that our citizens feel confidence in the judiciary,” Carcieri said. “It is one of the bedrocks of our society and our community that our public has to feel confidence and trust, if you will, in the judiciary in order to function as a society well. We are blessed with that right now.”
Carcieri noted that it was he who appointed Suttell, then a Family Court judge, to the high court “almost to the day six years ago.”
Suttell told the gathering that he accepts his new responsibility, “with great excitement and humility,” and declared himself, “ready to accept the difficult challenges that invariably lie ahead.”
Praising his predecessors for placing the court system “on a solid footing,” Suttell pledged to keep the judiciary “on a level and steady course.”
“As judges, we have the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives,” he added, “and we must never forget what a sacred trust that is.”
Suttell thanked Carcieri for “the confidence you have shown in me and the honor you have bestowed upon me.”
Suttell, 60, of Little Compton, succeeds Frank Williams in the center chair on the high bench, and takes the reins from acting Chief Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, who has filled the position since Williams announced his retirement at the end of last year.
Goldberg said she welcomed Suttell to the leadership of the judiciary “with joy and enthusiasm.”
Known as an advocate for the appointment of female judges, Goldberg said, “although Justice Suttell is not a woman, he is a very, very good man.”
Williams said his successor “exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.”
The political leaders, state and federal judges, and family and well-wishers who had
spread out across the Statehouse lawn to witness the swearing-in found themselves unexpectedly crowded into the hot and humid center of the building below the marble dome.
The ceremony had been planned outdoors on the Statehouse steps, but just as the long line of the state’s judges had marched down the steps and took their seats, the spitting drizzle turned into a full rain shower as it had been threatening to do for an hour, driving everyone back up into the marble Rotunda, which had been prepared for that eventuality. Just as everyone arranged themselves in the Rotunda and the ceremony began again, however, the shower outside passed and the skies brightened once again.
Among those on hand were former governors Bruce Sundlun and Edward DiPrete.
House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, an attorney who practiced in Family Court before Suttell, said that forum deals with “abuse and neglect cases, some of the most heart-wrenching situations that you can deal with, oftentimes with pro se litigants (appearing without a lawyer) that the very nature of their well-being, their children’s well-being, and the conditions that brought them to the court are at the forefront. And I can tell you, if that in and of itself doesn’t take the measure of the person, nothing does. And this gentleman served with distinction in the Family Court and brought that perspective to the Supreme Court.”
Fox lauded Suttell as “a man of great integrity, of great substance, but also a man that has an affinity with people, whose affable nature comes through.”
In an oblique reference to the confirmation hearings now going on in Washington for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Fox pointed to Suttell’s “compassion for the dignity of human life and what that means in terms of appearing before the court and what that means in terms of doling out a decision, not just words on a paper, but how those words on the paper affect the lives of those who appear before you.”
Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed also praised the new chief justice as “compassionate, insightful and thoughtful; he has a profound knowledge and respect for the law. He is a jurist of the highest character, a distinguished gentleman as Superior Court Judge Alice Gibney phrased it, ‘with a sterling reputation for integrity.’ 
“Justice Suttell’s record tells us that we should not be deceived by his gentlemanly demeanor,” Paiva Weed added, “but he is willing to decide the difficult cases.”
Besides hearing and deciding cases, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is also the administrative head of the entire judiciary. Suttell will oversee a workforce of about 700 judges, clerks, court officers and other employees of the court system with a budget just shy of $100 million.