Long judicial tenure occasionally left enfeebled justices deciding important cases

Evidence

The Court was, in general, blessed by a number of long tenures. This gave the Court great stability, perhaps too much at times. Unionists thought it was a curse that Roger B. Taney, the Dred Scott chief justice, lived to a ripe old age (he was eighty-​seven when he died in 1864). Robert C. Grier stayed on the Court three years after a stroke left him somewhat befuddled. It is not certain that he understood, in late 1869, which side he was voting for in the Legal Tender cases, which involved important and controversial issues of monetary policy. A delegation from the Court, including Stephen Field, asked him gently to resign. Field’s own career was the longest in the nineteenth century. He was appointed in 1863, at the age of forty-​six, and he served for thirty-​four years, eight months, and twenty days. In his last year on the Court, in 1897, his mind failed noticeably; at times he lapsed into a “dull stupor.” He wrote no majority opinions at all in the 1890s; all he wrote were cranky concurrences and dissents. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2214

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of a stroke-befuddled justice possibly voting without knowing which side he was on in the Legal Tender Cases is a vivid, quotable institutional anecdote.
• QUESTION: Friedman mentions the Field-Harlan resignation episode obliquely; worth chasing how justices pressed colleagues to resign and whether any formal mechanisms existed — live issue today.
• XREF: connects to: Judicial independence advocates favor insulated selection and long tenure — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 589; Article III judicial independence rests on tenure and salary protections — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 225

Broader Connections

• Judicial independence advocates favor insulated selection and long tenure #expands (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 589