By Chief Justice Jay Alexander of the Washington State Supreme Court:
[Consider] the poignant story surrounding the resignations of two [U.S. Supreme Court ] justices of the period, Robert C. Grier and Stephen J. Field. Grier, who began his service on the Court in 1846, began to show signs of severe mental decline in the 1860s. By 1869, his thinking became so muddy that a delegation of his fellow justices waited on him and asked him to resign, and he did soon thereafter. A relatively new member of the Court at that time was Justice Field. Ironically, many years after Justice Grier’s resignation from the Court, Justice Field’s mental condition also began to decline. Eventually, the then-Chief Justice, Melville Fuller, and other Justices of the court determined that the old gentleman should be urged to resign. Justice John Marshall Harlan was delegated the responsibility of calling on Justice Field in order to encourage his resignation. Harlan approached this onerous task by reminding the elderly Justice Field of what he understood was Field’s own visit with Justice Grier many years before. To this entreaty, the old man is alleged to have said, “Yes, and a dirtier day’s work I never did in my life.” Professor Atkinson points out in an appendix that despite what Justice Field said to Justice Harlan on that day, Field was probably not a member of the delegation that had called on Justice Grier those many years before. In any case, Harlan’s visit did not have the same effect on Field that the 1869 visit had on Grier, for Field did not resign. Instead, he remained on the court for a few more years until he established the then-record tenure of thirty-four years, eight months and twenty days.