11585837205_87d514e4b7_zIn the last two posts, we’ve been investigating where in the state the Illinois Supreme Court tends to draw its civil docket from. Now, we turn to the last five years of our study period.

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During the most recent years – comprising the entirety of the Kilbride Court and the beginning of the Garman Court – we see Cook County’s share of the docket remaining relatively steady, with a one-year jump in 2010, and the increase in government cases from the state capital in Sangamon County continuing. Both St. Clair and Madison Counties saw one-year spikes out of proportion to their population in cases, but neither saw any cases at all reach the Court during this period in the other four years.

Aggregated for the entire period, only three counties in the state accounted for more than 5% of the Court’s civil docket:

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For the entire 15-year study period, many counties’ shares of the docket mirror reasonably well their share of Illinois’ population. Not surprisingly, Sangamon County is comparatively overrepresented on the docket because of government cases. St. Clair and Madison Counties – both widely considered to be highly favorable to plaintiffs and both with heavy asbestos dockets – are somewhat overrepresented in cases granted review by the Court. We will further address the implications of this finding later, when we determine the district-by-district reversal rates of the Appellate Court. On the other hand, among the top counties in population, Kane (1.3%), Winnebago (0.7%) and McHenry counties (1.1) are somewhat underrepresented.

In our next post, we’ll begin our investigation of what areas of the civil law the Court has addressed during the last fifteen years.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Michael Hart (no changes).

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[1]           Jurisdictions accounting for one civil case each in 2010 were St. Clair, Will, Tazewell, Champaign, Jefferson, LaSalle and Marion Counties.

[2]           Jurisdictions accounting for one civil case each in 2011 were Winnebago, Kane, Williamson, Peoria, Marion and Jersey Counties, and the Illinois Pollution Control Board and Educational Labor Relations Board.

[3]           Jurisdictions accounting for one civil case each in 2012 were Sangamon, Lake, Madison, Kane, Kendall, Lee, Clinton and Massac Counties.

[4]           Jurisdictions accounting for one civil case each in 2013 were Lake, Will, McHenry, Kane, Putnam, Vermilion, Piatt, Effingham, Stephenson, Woodford and Macoupin Counties, and the Illinois Pollution Control Board and Educational Labor Relations Board.

[5]           Jurisdictions accounting for one civil case each in 2014 were Washington, Marion, Peoria, Kendall, Kane and Franklin Counties, and the Illinois Commerce Commission.