Yesterday, we continued our analysis, refining simple reversal rates as a measure of how the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court fared before the Supreme Court by calculating each court’s average votes to affirm in civil cases between 2005 and 2009.  Today, we ask which Districts had the highest and lowest percentage of their civil decisions reversed unanimously during these years – a votes to affirm score of zero.

Not surprisingly, given the data on average votes to affirm, 62.96% of the civil cases reviewed by the Court from the Fifth District were unanimously reversed.  Division Five of the First District was right behind: 62.5% of its civil cases had a votes to affirm of zero.  Direct appeals, which had comparatively low average votes to affirm, ended in unanimous reversals 56.25% of the time.  Half of the civil cases from Divisions Three and Four of the First District were unanimously reversed as well.  For Division Two of the First District, the unanimous reversal rate was 41.18%, and forty percent of the Second District’s cases were too.  The Third District fared relatively well, with only 36.36% of its cases unanimously reversed, and Division Six of the First District was not far behind at 31.25%.  The three Appellate Courts which fared the best by this measure were the Fourth District (25.93%), the Industrial Commission panel of the First District (25%), and Division One of the First District (21.43%).

Join us back here next Tuesday, when we’ll turn our attention to the Court’s criminal cases between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Dan (no changes).