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Chief Justice Declines to Provide Health Update
Legal Times
November 30, 2007
Nearly four months after he suffered a seizure near his summer home in Maine, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. is still declining to answer questions from the press and the public about the status of his health, his diagnosis, or the treatment or medications he might have been prescribed.
At the time the episode occurred in late July, some medical experts said the seizure -- paired with one he had in 1993 -- meant he had epilepsy, with possible consequences for his safety while driving and the prospect of taking anti-seizure medications that could affect him at work.
Friends say that off the bench, the 52-year-old Roberts is in good spirits and seeming good health, and he does not talk about the episode. On the bench and around the Court, no impairment or change in his behavior has been noted.
But experts on the health of justices are critical of Roberts for refusing to provide any update on his health. They say he is mimicking the stance taken by his predecessor and mentor, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was steadfast in giving out as little health information as possible throughout his tenure, even during his bout with thyroid cancer preceding his death in 2005.
"He is behaving in completely Rehnquistian fashion, saying absolutely nothing and presuming that 'the public be damned' -- that justices' medical conditions do not involve the public interest and are entirely private," says David Garrow, a University of Cambridge professor who has written extensively on issues raised when justices are ill or decrepit. Garrow also takes the news media to task for not insisting on updates. "This has fallen completely off the public, journalistic radar screen."
University of Missouri political scientist David Atkinson also sees regrettable parallels with Rehnquist's refusal to talk about his health, not just in 2005 but in the early 1980s, when he was impaired by dependence on back pain medication. "Rehnquist has been a very poor precedent," says Atkinson, who was the author of a 1999 book on why justices leave the Court.
"We really have no idea how serious or episodic" Roberts' condition might be, Atkinson says. "The public is entitled to know what medications he is taking. It affects everyone. Because of the decisions they are making, the health of justices is not of small consequence."
Roberts declined to comment for this article, either on his health or on why he refuses to update the public.
