Chief Justice Roberts suffers seizure
ROCKPORT, Maine -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was rushed to a hospital yesterday afternoon after suffering a seizure at his summer island home, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.
Roberts, 52, fell on a dock after having a "benign idiopathic seizure," said Kathleen Landin Arberg, the court's public information officer. She said that Roberts has "fully recovered from the incident" but that he would remain at Penobscot Bay Medical Center here overnight for observation.
Arberg said that the chief justice, who has presided over the court for two terms, received minor scrapes from the fall but that a "thorough neurological evaluation . . . revealed no cause for concern."
She said he experienced a similar event in 1993 but had no recurrence until yesterday.
Seizures are any sudden, abnormal electrical activity in the brain. While some are focused in one part of the brain, others can be generalized. Not all seizures involve convulsions. Arberg's description of a benign idiopathic seizure indicates an episode whose origins are unknown.
Newsweek reported in November 2005 that Roberts suffered a seizure in January 1993 while golfing. "It was stunning and out of the blue and inexplicable," Larry Robbins, a Justice Department colleague, told the magazine. Robbins said Roberts was not allowed to drive for several months after.
There is no record of any discussion of the 1993 seizure or of Roberts's health in general during his confirmation hearings. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who chaired the hearings, told CNN last night that senators were told about the episode but did not find it serious enough to ask about.
Roberts, the youngest member of the Supreme Court, took office as chief justice in September 2005 after being nominated by President Bush to replace the late William Rehnquist.
"Most seizures last from 30 seconds to two minutes and do not cause lasting harm," according to information posted online by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. "However, it is a medical emergency if seizures last longer than 5 minutes or if a person has many seizures and does not wake up between them."
