Chief Justice Roberts leaves hospital, a day after seizure

Chief Justice John Roberts walked out of a hospital in the state of Maine Tuesday, released a day after he suffered a seizure.

Roberts strode briskly out of the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine, wearing a blue sport coat, open collar shirt and slacks. He waved to onlookers before getting into a waiting sports utility vehicle.

The chief justice, 52, plans to continue his summer vacation, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. Doctors found no cause for concern after evaluating Roberts, she said.

Named to the highest U.S. court by President George W. Bush in 2005, Roberts is the youngest justice on a court in which the senior member, John Paul Stevens, is 87.

Roberts was hospitalized after he fell on a dock near his home on Hupper Island, near Port Clyde, Maine. He had a prior unexplained seizure in 1993. Bush called Roberts Tuesday, Bush's chief spokesman said, and was assured that the chief justice was doing well.

"The president was reassured," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Roberts "sounded like he was in great spirits," Snow said, relaying details of the phone call.

Roberts became chief justice after the death of William Rehnquist in September 2005. He has led the Supreme Court to a more conservative stance. Helped by Justice Samuel Alito, who won confirmation in early 2006, conservatives have won twice as often as they lost on the Roberts-led court. The 2006-07 term brought limits on abortion rights, restrictions on school integration programs and greater freedom for political advertising.

Justices on the highest U.S. court serve until they retire or die. The Roberts and Alito appointments and the new direction they are taking the court mean their influence will continue to be felt long after Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Doctors who examined Roberts after his seizure said they found no tumor, stroke or any other explanation for the episode.

The White House was aware of that previous seizure when Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court, Snow said.

By definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a Washington Hospital Center neurologist who is not involved in the Roberts case.

Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another is something he and his doctor will have to decide. But after two seizures, the likelihood of another at some point is greater than 60 percent.

Epilepsy is merely a term for a seizure disorder, but it is a loaded term because it makes people think of lots of seizures, cautioned Dr. Edward Mkrdichian, a neurosurgeon at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.

Still, Mkrdichian said anyone who has had two otherwise unexplained seizures is at high risk for a third, and that he puts such patients on anti-seizure medications.

"Having two seizures so many years apart without any known culprit is going to be very difficult to figure out," agreed Dr. Max Lee of the Milwaukee Neurological Institute.

The incident occurred as Roberts was returning home after running errands. He 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.

Once at the hospital, he underwent a "thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern," Arberg said.

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 Roberts' seizure that year. Robbins said Roberts never mentioned what the problem was and he never heard of it happening again.

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.

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Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, Jerry Harkavy and Glenn Adams in Rockport, Maine and Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this story.

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