Robert Wilentz was not the first great Chief Justice of New Jersey, but he continued a stellar tradition in grand style. Under his leadership and guidance for 17 years, the New Jersey Supreme Court strengthened its reputation as the most outstanding state judicial body in the country and continued to provide leadership in state constitutional jurisprudence. In addition to his superb leadership of the state's high court, Chief Justice Wilentz also used his prerogatives as Chief Justice to make appointments to the Appellate and Chancery Divisions in ways which greatly strengthened the entire state judicial system at its major pressure points. But the Chief will mostly be remembered for his unwavering commitment to the poor and the powerless and for making the New Jersey Constitution a living reality for those most in need of its protections. At a time when the United States Supreme Court was turning its back on the most vulnerable segments of our population, under the Chief's guidance, the New Jersey Court kept the promise of justice and equality alive here. He did not father the Court's jurisprudence of equal school funding under the State Constitution's "Thorough and Efficient Education" clause, but he certainly became a most willing adoptive parent. In his expansive and sensitive Abbott v. Burke opinion, he addressed the problems of the urban poor whose "cities have deteriorated and whose lives are often bleak" as follows: Clearly, we are failing to solve this problem. It is the problem of bringing this important and increasingly isolated class into the life of America, for this is not just a New Jersey problem.... The central truth is that the poor remain plunged in poverty and severe educational deprivation.... The record proves what all suspect: that if the children of poorer districts went to school today in richer ones, educationally they would be a lot better off... And what everyone knows is that -- as cren -- the only reason they do not get the advantage is that they were born in a poor district. For while we have underlined the impact of the constitutional deficiency on our state, its impact on these children is far more important. They face, through no fault of their own, a life of poverty and isolation that most of us cannot begin to understand or appreciate. Chief Justice Wilentz recognized, as the U.S. Supreme Court once did, that the enforcers of constitutional rights had a special obligation to protect the rights of "discrete and insular minorities" which lacked the political clout to protect themselves in the legislative arena. It was that class of "discrete and insular minorities" that United States Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone said was entitled to "strict scrutiny" against hostile legislation in his landmark 1938 opinion in the Carolene Products case. At a time when the nation's high court in Washington was abandoning the jurisprudence of equal protection and trumpeting the equal right of rich and poor to sleep under bridges, Wilentz and his New Jersey colleagues kept the torch of liberty burning bright in at least one state. Similarly, Chief Justice Wilentz picked up the cudgel against suburban housing discrimination in Mount Laurel II. Building on the jurisprudence of his predecessors, the Chief's opinion set forth "the doctrine requiring that municipalities' land use regulations provide a realistic opportunity for low and moderate income housing." Tracing the path of the Court's original Mount Laurel decision ten years earlier, the Chief Justice expressed his frustration and dismay at the defendants' unrelenting efforts to resist compliance with the constitutional mandate. The opinion went on for 155 pages in an effort to finally establish the obligation of New Jersey's affluent communities to make accommodations for the less well off. Once again, Robert Wilentz' vision of a just society flies off the pages: It would be useful to remind ourselves that the doctrine does not arise from some theoretical analysis of our Constitution, but rather from the underlying concepts of fundamental fairness in the exercise of governmental power. The basis for the constitutional obligation is simple: the State controls the use of land, all of the land. In exercising that control it cannot favor rich over poor. It cannot legislatively set aside dilapidated housing in urban ghettos for the poor and decent housing elsewhere for everyone else.... The clarity of the constitutional obligation is seen most simply by imagining what this state would be like were this claim never to be recognized and enforced: poor people forced to live in urban slums forever ... simply because they are not wanted. It is a vision at variance with ... all concepts of fundamental fairness and decency that underpin many constitutional obligations. It was obvious that to Robert Wilentz the Constitution was not just empty rhetoric but a living document designed to make people's lives better in the here and now. In area after area, Chief Justice Wilentz insisted that both public and private entities with control over people's lives and destinies honor constitutional mandates. In the ACLU, where freedom of speech occupies an especially venerated position in the hierarchy of democratic values, no opinion is more revered than the Chief's paean to free expression in the shopping mall case, New Jersey Coalition Against the War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty, et. al. Rejecting the claim of New Jersey's shopping mall owners that their property rights were superior to rights of speech under the State Constitution, the Chief proclaimed: We look back and we look ahead in an effort to determine what a constitutional provision means. If free speech is to mean anything in the future, it must be exercised at these centers. Our constitutional right encompasses more than leafletting and associated speech on sidewalks located in empty downtown business districts. It means communicating with the people in the new commercial and social centers; if the people have left for the shopping centers, our constitutional right includes the right to go there too, to follow them, and to talk to them. We do not believe that those who adopted a constitutional provision granting a right of free speech wanted it to diminish in importance as society changed, to be dependent on the unrelated accidents of economic transformation, or to be silenced because of a new way of doing business. Even when the ACLU disagreed with the Chief Justice, as in the Bonfires of the Vanities case, we recognized that his motives were pure. He felt so strongly about the racial divisions of society and the alienation of African-Americans from a racist legal system, that he could not tolerate the use of a public courthouse in a way he felt would be demeaning to the non-white population. New Jersey and its citizens are forever indebted to this brilliant and sensitive jurist who prized liberty and justice above all else.