November 8, 1981

HARTFORD LAST week, more than three decades after he heard his first case as a 26-year-old judge on the Torrington Municipal Court, John A. Speziale became the 32d Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. Justice Speziale, a member of the high court since 1977, succeeded Joseph W. Bogdanski, who, having reached mandatory retirement age of 70, will leave the court Thursday to become a trial referee. With the assumption of his new duties, Justice Speziale has turned over the administration of the court system, a role that had earned him a reputation as a deft, if somewhat authoritarian, manager, to Superior Court Judge Maurice J. Sponzo of Hartford. Judge Sponzo, a longtime friend of Justice Speziale, has until now, been Deputy Chief Court Administrator.

Democracy, for all its virtues, often frustrates those who seek a clear and consistent meaning in its expression. So it was last week when gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia produced a surprisingly large Democratic victory in a Republican state and a razor-thin Republican victory in a Democratic one. If the race in New Jersey, between Republican Thomas H. Kean and his Democratic opponent, Representative James J. Florio, was too close to call before the voting, it remained officially so after it. Mr. Kean, who advocated a Reagan-style package of state tax and spending cuts, led by just 1,726 votes over Mr. Florio, who had opposed the reductions. But with 2.28 million ballots, it was hardly the kind of margin out of which victory speeches are fashioned.

Southeast Asia has been a focus of war, of violent changes of regime and of direct and indirect involvement of outside powers. Yet despite the convulsions that followed the temporary end of the Indochina wars in 1975, a correspondent who has spent most of the last 12 years in this region leaves impressed with a constant amid the turmoil. What has not changed is the continuing rise, however uneven in many aspects, of the standard of living and the state of peace in the countries of the region that reject Communism, while the three Communist countries are mired in war, social upheaval and economic stagnation or decline. Economic Floors and Ceilings Rise Foreigners visiting this city, Manila or Jakarta, Indonesia, for the first time will be impressed with the prevalence of luxury cars in settings of poverty. Those who have known Southeast Asia over a longer period, however, will note that in addition to the economic injustice evidenced by this conspicuous consumption in the midst of penury, there is ample proof that the floor has risen for the many while the ceiling has gone higher for the few.

A BETTER CLASS OF PERSON An Autobiography. By John Osborne. 285 pp. New York: E.P. Dutton. $13.75. ''HAPPINESS,'' John Osborne wrote in his notebooks in 1954, ''means not looking back.'' Two years later, his play ''Look Back in Anger'' wiped the smugness off the frivolous face of English theater. Osborne was a heavyweight hater. His malicious wit and fulminating tirades blazed a trail for English drama. By lacerating the tame and timid world of his parents Osborne became the daring, romantic voice of a new generation's rebellion. His play was aptly compared to Noel Coward's ''The Vortex'' (1924), which also extended the limits of what was theatrically acceptable. ''We both wrote about what we knew and didn't like,'' Coward said later. ''Mine was a more circumspect dislike. Everything bothers him. It may be a sign of the times.'' It was; and, when times changed, the sinew of Osborne's writing turned to flab. Then, like Coward, the renegade became a roast beef Tory.

Many leading private economists say that the long-predicted recession has taken hold of the economy so strongly in the last month that they have begun to doubt whether President Reagan's recovery program will ever get off the ground. Many of them have revised their economic forecasts for the next year sharply downward. The economists, who work in Wall Street, universities and private concerns, say the latest economic indicators appear to foreshadow a Christmas season that will provide little in the way of economic good cheer. Although some on Wall Street look to the recession to produce the long-awaited decline in short-@ and long-term interest rates, which has already begun, many economists argue that this phenomenon could be short-lived.