Re: Breaking News
Top US judge, Chief Justice John Roberts, hospitalized after suffering seizure at vacation home
MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
Monday, July 30, 2007
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his seaside summer home in the northeastern state of Maine on Monday, which caused a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
The senior U.S. judge was to remain overnight in a Maine hospital.
Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Maine, where he underwent a "thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern," Arberg said in a statement.
Roberts underwent a similar episode in 1993, she said.
Besides being the youngest justice on the nine-member court at age 52 _ the oldest is Justice John Paul Stevens, 87 _ Roberts added a rightward tilt to the court's political bent when he was appointed in 2005, especially after the confirmation in early 2006 of another conservative justice, John Alito. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges receive lifetime appointments.
Roberts' seizure occurred at midafternoon on a dock near his summer home in Port Clyde on Maine's Hupper Island. Port Clyde, part of the town of St. George, is about 90 miles by car northeast of Portland, midway up the coastline of the northeasternmost U.S. state.
Roberts was taken by private boat to the mainland and then transferred to an ambulance, St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky said.
"He was conscious and alert when they put him in the rescue (vehicle)," Polky said. The hospital, in Rockport, did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.
President George W. Bush chose both Roberts and Alito as justices in 2005. Bush was informed of the hospitalization by his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, White House officials said.
Roberts is the father of two young children.
Doctors called Monday's incident "a benign idiopathic seizure," Arberg said. The White House described the January 1993 episode as an "isolated, idiosyncratic seizure."
Larry Robbins, a Washington attorney who worked with Roberts at the Justice Department in 1993, said he drove Roberts to work for several months after the incident. Robbins said Roberts never mentioned what the problem was, and he never heard of it happening again.
In 2001, Roberts described his health as "excellent," according to Senate Judiciary Committee records.
Roberts became chief justice after the death of William Rehnquist in September 2005, although Bush had first chosen him to take Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat after she announced her retirement that year.
He had served as an appellate judge in Washington and spent more than a decade before that as a lawyer in a Washington law firm, where he specialized in arguing cases before the Supreme Court.
Roberts also served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in the 1980s and '90s. Both are Republicans, like George H.W. Bush.
Roberts spent a couple of weeks in Europe in July, teaching a course in Vienna and attending a conference in Paris. He was at the court in Washington late last week.
