🚀 go-pugleaf

"Peter H. Proctor" wrote:
> 
> "WHEN SUPREME COURT JUSTICES REFUSE TO RETIRE:"....  JOHN DEAN
> 
> http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20010720.html
> 
> "Justices' mental problems are all too easily hidden. While on the
> bench, Justice Frank Murphy, who served from 1940-49, had a serious
> drug problem (Demerol addiction), and was seeing a psychoanalyst. One
> biographer reports that at one point, he was illegally purchasing
> drugs twice a day. Law clerks, and other justices, were deciding his
> votes. No one outside the Court knew. "
> 
> "Long before Associate Justice William Rehnquist was nominated to be
> chief justice, he had a serious health issue that may have impaired
> his decisionmaking. For nine years, from 1972-81, the Capitol
> physician, Freeman H. Cary, had prescribed a powerful hypnotic
> medication, Placidyl, because of Rehnquist's chronic lower back pain.
> 
> This powerful controlled substance is prescribed for relief from
> insomnia. Its known side effects include "confused thinking, impaired
> memory," and even "delirium." Rehnquist started at 500 milligrams a
> day, but the dose soon tripled, to 1500 milligrams a day.
> 
> Ignoring Rehnquist's Prescription Drug Use
> 
> By 1981, journalists covering the Supreme Court did notice that the
> highly articulate Rehnquist was having increasing difficulty asking
> questions from the bench. Reporters who engaged in private
> conversations with Rehnquist noted that he clearly had "significant
> difficulty talking." But none wrote about it.
> 
> It was not until Justice Rehnquist ended up in the hospital in January
> 1982, and it was learned that the Justice had been "seeing things and
> hearing things that other people didn't see or hear," did reporters
> say anything.
> 
> Even when he was elevated to chief justice, Rehnquist's health records
> remained sealed during his confirmation hearings. More than this, the
> Senate Judiciary Committee agreed in advance not to ask him any
> questions about his health. He did testify about the cloak of secrecy
> regarding the health of justices, but not about his own condition.
> 
> "I think judges have much more of a tendency to 'pull the wagons
> around' or something like that � particularly on our Court, where
> there are only nine seats, the health of every individual Justice is
> an endless subject of speculation," Rehnquist told the Senate. As
> chief justice he has continued to keep his, and the other justices',
> health well hidden. We can only assume that Rehnquist is in better
> mental health than at the time of his 1982 hospitalization. "
> 
> Dr P

Excellent history lesson. I enjoy learning things like that. I had never
heard about this before. Do you have any other good tidbits along the
same lines?