For the past several weeks, we’ve been reviewing the county by county data for civil and criminal cases at the Supreme Court.  This week and next, we’ll be looking at the reversal rates for the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court.  First up today – Chicago’s First District.  Since it’s difficult occasionally to confirm which Division of the First District a case arose from, we divide the data into seven courts – Divisions One through Six and a catch-all for unallocated First District cases.   Because individual Divisions typically have no more than 2-4 cases decided by the Court in any given year, we use three- year floating average reversal rates – thus, the numbers reported below as “1992” are the combined reversal rate for the years 1990, 1991 and 1992.  We then drop the 1990 data and add 1993 to report the next year (and so on).

As reported in Table 1339, reversal rates in the First District tended to cluster around the 50-60% mark through most of the 90s.  Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 5 all had spikes, as did the unallocated First District cases.  Division 1 hit 80% reversal in 1993; Division 2 reached 75% in 1996; Division 3 reached 81.25% in 1996 and Division 5 was at 100% in 1997.  The unallocated cases were reversed at an 87.5% clip in 1996.  Only Divisions 4 and 6 were consistent across the period, seldom dipping or spiking.  Unallocated cases were at 22.22% in 1993 and 33.33% in 1994.  Division 1 was at 30% in 1999.  Division 3 was at 36.36% in 1999.  The reversal rate of Division 4 was 37.5% in 1997.

The three-year floating averages were a bit more consistent from 2000 to 2009.  Division 1 had a three- year dip from 2007 to 2009 – 28.57% (2007), 12.5% (2008) and 25% (2009).  Division 2 fell to 28.57% in 2004 and one-third for the next two years.  Division 4 rose to 83.33% in 2004 and 80% the following year.  Division 5 was 80% in 2007 and 75% in the following year.  Division 6 dipped to 16.67% in 2006 and 27.27% in 2007.

The reversal rates became a bit more unstable over the past decade.  Division 1’s rate was at only 27.27% in 2010 before jumping to 100% in 2013 and 2014.  Division 2’s reversal rate was quite high early in the decade: 83.33% in 2010, 80% in 2011, 90% in 2012 and 2013, 100% in 2014 and 80% in 2014.  Division 3 was quite high at the beginning and end of the decade: 87.5% in 2010, 80% in 2018 and 2019.  Division 4 has fared well in the past decade for the most part – 33.33% in 2010 and 2019, 25% in 2011 and 30% in 2012.  Division 4’s highest rate was 71.43% in 2014.  Division 5’s reversal rate was 80% in 2011 and 2012 before falling to one-third in 2014 and 28.57% in 2015.  Division 6’s reversal rate reached 76.92% in 2012, 72.73% in 2014, 75% in 2015 and 80% in 2016.

Join us back here tomorrow as we review the data for the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Districts.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Adam Jones (no changes).