High court service was hazardous to Kansan’s health

The hand-wringing over whether Harriet Miers has either the qualifications or the temperament for the U.S. Supreme Court unearthed an interesting story about the most recent Kansan to serve on the high court: Charles Evans Whittaker (1957-62). As National Review Online tells it, the stressful work so overwhelmed him that he had a nervous breakdown. “According to one brief biography, Whittaker was so detail-oriented and unable to delegate work to his clerks, so obsessed with mastering every remote factual consideration in the cases before the Court, that he was ‘working six to seven days a week (and) putting in 17 hours a day.’ ”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

One Comment

  1. Brian
    Posted October 9, 2005 at 12:27 pm | Permalink

    What a wimp!! Ronald Reagan used to work, and George W. does work, at least 17 hours a week. Oh wait, that’s 17 hours a day…never mind.