We’ve been looking at the sources of appellate jurisdiction for the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil docket.  Does the Court prefer to review final decisions with fully formed records?  How often does the Court review interlocutory decisions?

Between 2000 and 2004, Rule 301 appeals comprised between sixty and seventy percent of the Court’s civil docket.

Between 2005 and 2009, appeals from final judgments remained more-or-less constant, which purely interlocutory appeals drifted downwards.

The final years of our study period includes the four years since Justice Mary Jane Theis replaced the retiring Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald.  Rule 301 appeals remain relatively constant, and aside from a one-year spike in 2012, purely interlocutory appeals have continued to comprise a smaller portion of the Court’s civil docket.  Although Rule 301 appeals from final judgments were a proportionally larger part of the Court’s civil docket in 2013, it remains to be seen whether that pattern will hold in 2014 and beyond:

In our next post, we’ll examine whether the summary judgments present better or worse candidates for a petition for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Aaron Vowels (no changes).