Last week, we began our review of the individual Justices’ writing with a close look at the majority and concurring decisions for the first five years of our study period, 2000-2004. Today we turn to the Court’s dissents over the same period.
The Court’s most common dissenters between 2000 and 2004 were three of the
Yesterday, we began looking at the Justices’ writing of majority opinions during the initial five years of our study period, 2000-2004. Today, we turn to special concurrences.
Special concurrences are a rare phenomenon at the Court. Interestingly, Justice Charles Freeman wrote nearly three times as many concurrences in civil cases as any other Justice on
Now we turn to the records of the individual Justices. Having addressed the trends in the length of the Court’s opinions, we turn now to the Justices’ writing. Have certain Justices, on average, tended to write longer opinions than other members of the Court? Because each Justice writes between four and eight civil majority opinions
Yesterday, we addressed the Illinois Supreme Court’s standards for granting leave to file amicus briefs. Today, we turn to the data.
Civil cases which attract no amicus briefs are rare before the United States Supreme Court and a few of the state Supreme Courts, such as California. Multiple-amicus cases are not uncommon, and cases
The role of amicus curiae briefs in litigation before state Supreme Courts has been receiving scholarly attention during the past several years. Some have suggested that some interest groups have begun to see appellate litigation as merely another political arena in which to promote their policy goals.[1] Others have suggested that the explosion of
Yesterday, we addressed the length of majority opinions at the Illinois Supreme Court between 2000 and 2014. Today, we turn to concurrences and dissents.
Because they are structured differently, we expect special concurrences and dissents to follow the lead of the majority opinion in the same case: longer where the case is more complex, shorter
This week, we turn to another subject in our analysis of the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision making in civil cases – what determines the length of the Court’s opinions?
Majority opinions are not only comparatively short at the Illinois Supreme Court – they appear to be getting shorter:
We would expect majority opinions in divided
Today we return to our intensive look at reversal rates at the Illinois Supreme Court, disaggregated by the area of the law, for the period 2010-2014.
During this final study period, the Court continued to reverse liberal tort decisions from the Appellate Court at a significantly higher rate than conservative ones in the fields of
For the last two weeks, we’ve been taking an intensive look at reversal rates before the Illinois Supreme Court, disaggregated by areas of law, for the past fifteen years.
We turn finally to the 2010-2014 period – with the exception of Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald’s ten-month service in 2010, the tenure of the current seven
Yesterday, we began a close look at the reversal rates in the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil docket between 2005 and 2009. Now, we turn to the central question: what were the Court’s reversal rates in its most common areas of the law for liberal and conservative Appellate Court decisions?
Despite the more equal distribution of