Over the past few weeks, we’ve looked at how often the State is the appellant in civil and criminal cases at the Supreme Court, and at the distribution of the Court’s cases among the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court. This week, we turn our attention to a new topic: what areas of law does the State tend to appeal? First up, the civil docket, 1990-1996.
Not surprisingly, the most frequent area of the civil law in which the State appealed during these years was constitutional law. The State appealed two con law cases in 1990, one in 1991, two in 1992, one in 1993, four in 1994 and 1995, and seven in 1996. Next was government and administrative law. The State appealed six such cases in 1990, one in 1991, seven in 1992, four in 1993, three in 1994, two in 1995 and four in 1996.
The State appealed twelve decisions in tort law – two each in 1990 and 1991, five in 1992, one in 1993 and 1994, four in 1995 and one in 1996. The State appealed four decisions in environmental law – one in 1991, two in 1994 and one in 1995. The State appealed three employment law decisions – one in 1990 and two in 1992. The State appealed two decisions in three different areas of law: tax, workers compensation and domestic relations. Finally, the State appealed one decision apiece in the areas of commercial law, insurance law and arbitration (1991, 1994 and 1995, respectively).
Join us back here tomorrow as we turn to the data for the years 1997 through 2003.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Marco Verch (no changes).