Sleeping On The Job
By Neal Anthwal
We’ve all been there. You’re in an important meeting/lecture/war crimes tribunal, and the chairman/professor/prosecutor is saying something vitally important about the projected growth forecasts/P-K extinction event/Balkans and try as you might, you just… cannot… stay… awake… zzzzzzzzz.Oh sorry, dropped off for a second there. Where was I? Oh yes, ahem, yes, we’ve all been there, nodding off at work.
For most of us, it’s just a consequence of having a monotonous job and an hour’s kip in the stationery cupboard is part of normal working day. But what if that monotonous job is that of a high court judge? Their habit of heading off to the Land of Nod endangers the reliability and confidence of the court, not to mention leading to a media kafuffle. So say Ronald Grunstein and Dev Banerjee, authors of a new report in the journal Sleep, and something needs to be done about it.
Prof. Grunstein’s study analysed fifteen cases gleaned from internet reports, including various levels of the US judiciary from the supreme court down, the high court in London and the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. It included one directly documented case, that of one Judge Dodd (or should that be Judge Nodd? geddit?) from New South Wales, Australia, who was forced out of office following a media storm.
Of the cases studied, judicial sleepiness (their phrase, not mine) resulted in 10 retrials and 5 dismissals. "Clearly judicial sleepiness threatens the integrity of the judicial system and there would seem to be a need to develop preventative or monitoring strategies in judicial systems to prevent it occurring” says Grunstein.
What exactly would these “preventative or monitoring strategies” involve? I’d suggest that we enforce all judges to consume a couple of shots of espresso before each hearing. Unfortunately, a high intake of caffeine has been associated with an increase in blood pressure, and since many judges are not exactly young, fit and active (I always imagine judges to have frois-gras washed down with a glass of port for elevenses), this may well lead to them all dropping dead of heart attacks within a week.
Grunstein, however, offers far more sensible advice: "active monitoring of sleepiness and screening for sleep disorders [such as sleep apnea] should be encouraged so the condition can be treated, allowing people to work safely and effectively”.
More top science from Neal:
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Image: Self-portrait of Joseph Ducreux
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