Supreme conflict The high-stakes fight between Frank Williams and Keven McKenna once again puts the reputation of Rhode Island’s highest court on the line BY BRIAN C. JONES

AT THE OUTSET, the lawsuit seeking to unseat Frank J. Williams as chief justice of Rhode Island Supreme Court had a wacky feel to it, like those survivalists’ arguments that nobody actually has to pay their income taxes.

The gadfly Providence lawyer who filed the case, Keven A. McKenna, argued that Williams violated a state constitutional provision against dual-office-holding when he was sworn in to a federal government panel reviewing appeals of suspected terrorists. The oath-taking on September 21, 2004, created an instant "vacancy" in the office, said McKenna, who began referring to Williams as the "former" chief justice and included the state treasurer in the lawsuit, to block him paying Williams.

But quickly, the case turned serious.

If other lawyers regarded McKenna as a legal maverick — due his affinity for underdog social causes and often-futile political campaigns — some said that this case was at least a close call that provoked legitimate and potent arguments on both sides. It also marked another assault on Williams, who in his own way has been as unconventional as McKenna, taking such a public and aggressive stance as chief justice that one legal wag labeled him "Front Page Frank."

The case raised a slew of thorny issues, perhaps casting doubt — at least temporarily — on recent high court decisions in which Williams had participated. And as it ricocheted first around the Superior Court system, and then up to the Supreme Court itself, the case prompted the kind of questions about fairness and integrity that frequently plague Rhode Island government.

Just who and how would the case be decided? Inevitably, Williams’s four Supreme Court colleagues would rule whether their chief could stay or had to leave. McKenna himself put it this way: "The issue here is: can the judges judge themselves? That’s really the underlying issue — who judges the judges?"

As the Phoenix went to press, the case remained under consideration by the Supreme Court — without the chief justice, of course, since the case involves him personally.

Regardless of the outcome, some legal observers felt that public faith in the courts — something Williams targeted as a goal when he took office in 2001 — was at stake. If it seemed like the justices were circling the wagons to protect one of their own — or alternatively, cavalierly ejecting a controversial chief justice to get a new one — the court’s credibility could be damaged.

Certainly, the state’s court system has had its rocky moments in recent years. Prior to Williams taking the office, two of the last three chief justices were forced to leave early. In 1986, the late Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua resigned in the face of impeachment hearings about allegations he’d associated with criminals, and in 1993, Chief Justice Thomas F. Fay resigned following damaging revelations by the Providence Journal about his administration of the court system, and he later pleaded guilty to misusing court funds.

Alan S. Flink, a former Rhode Island Bar Association president, and one of a few legal experts who would speak on the record about the Williams case, noted the pressure on the Supreme Court. "Here you have got four judges considering how to judge not only their peer," Flink said, but "he’s first among equals. It’s a daunting task, and I’m sure each and every one of them realizes that."