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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Chief Justice: Public life comes with pressure

by

ELIZABETH GONZALES
35 days ago
20250616
L to R – Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Bishop Claude Berkley share their thoughts during the panel discussion hosted by Bishop’s High School to celebrate its 100th anniversary on Sunday 15 June 2025. [Image by DREW DYER]

L to R – Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Bishop Claude Berkley share their thoughts during the panel discussion hosted by Bishop’s High School to celebrate its 100th anniversary on Sunday 15 June 2025. [Image by DREW DYER]

drew dyer

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Bish­op Claude Berkley say lead­er­ship in to­day’s so­ci­ety re­quires more than in­tel­li­gence and au­thor­i­ty—it de­mands deep em­pa­thy, strong moral ground­ing, and the re­silience to en­dure pub­lic pres­sure.

Both men spoke dur­ing a pow­er­ful pan­el dis­cus­sion host­ed by Bish­op’s High School to cel­e­brate its 100th an­niver­sary, where they shared per­son­al re­flec­tions on how their child­hoods, school ex­pe­ri­ences, and faith shaped their lead­er­ship styles.

CJ Archie, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s youngest ap­point­ed Chief Jus­tice, said pub­lic life car­ries im­mense—and of­ten mis­un­der­stood—pres­sure.

“You can­not hold any po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty or lead­er­ship for any sig­nif­i­cant time with­out com­ing un­der at­tack. That is the na­ture of life,” he said.

“If I have a de­ci­sion to make, my first ques­tion is, does what I’m about to do align with the core prin­ci­ples by which I have cho­sen to live?”

He said know­ing he acts with in­tegri­ty helps him sleep at night, even when pub­lic crit­i­cism be­comes deeply per­son­al.

“I think for me, my re­silience comes pre­cise­ly from the fact that we were so sup­port­ed. No­body told us that there were lim­its, you know. No­body told us,” he said.

But he ac­knowl­edged that the emo­tion­al toll of lead­er­ship reach­es far be­yond the in­di­vid­ual.

“I will tell you, the pres­sure is not so much on you, you know. It’s on your fam­i­ly and the peo­ple who are close to you and the peo­ple who love you and the peo­ple who are con­cerned about you,” the CJ ob­served.

“Some­times that it­self is in the equa­tion, be­cause… I mean, it’s okay for me, I could take the pain. But do I want to put my loved ones through that pain?”

Bish­op Berkley spoke about how spir­i­tu­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty shapes his lead­er­ship, and how grow­ing up in To­ba­go pre­pared him for a life of ser­vice.

“Well, re­mem­ber, we ac­quired this—the cloth. So there was a life go­ing on be­fore the cloth, yes, and too much, too much life,” he said.

He re­called how school and com­mu­ni­ty life were deeply struc­tured, and that foun­da­tion taught him self-dis­ci­pline.

“The way the school was or­gan­ised put some things in place that de­mand­ed a cer­tain stan­dard of you,” he said.

Berkley said deal­ing with con­flict is in­evitable in lead­er­ship, but warned that mod­ern so­ci­ety’s anger now of­ten re­places ef­forts at res­o­lu­tion.

“Con­flict is ba­sic to life… What we would like to en­cour­age is that we’ve got to find a way to deal with anger,” he said.

Both men ar­gued that val­ues such as ac­count­abil­i­ty, em­pa­thy, and dis­ci­pline are miss­ing in to­day’s so­ci­ety—and must be taught again, start­ing with the fam­i­ly and the school sys­tem.

CJ Archie said true jus­tice must be root­ed in com­pas­sion, restora­tion, and moral codes—many of which, he be­lieves, are found in scrip­ture. He said re­li­gion and law re­main in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked.

Both men agreed that their work shares a com­mon foun­da­tion.

“Where do we get our sense of jus­tice from? It re­al­ly is, you know, even with­out any sense of any par­tic­u­lar re­li­gion or so. It’s those codes which in our con­struct we find in the Bible … Some­times when you read the sto­ries, you may be tempt­ed to think that our no­tion of jus­tice, at least in mod­ern times, is less harsh, but jus­tice in­volves el­e­ments of com­pen­sa­tion. It in­volves el­e­ments of com­pas­sion. It in­volves el­e­ments of restora­tion. And we can find all of those things in the Bible,” CJ Archie said.


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