Reprinted with permission from the my article in the October 2017 issue of ALI CLE’s The Practical Lawyer.
“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
— Professor William Edwards Deming
All of us who often speak and write about the ongoing revolution in data analytics for litigation have heard it from at
Last time, we began our review of the general data for reversal rates in tort cases between 2000 and 2009. This time, we’re drilling down further to look at where the cases came from and whether the Court’s reversal rate differed significantly from one District to another of the Appellate Court.
Not surprisingly, the bulk
This time, we’re reviewing the data on the Court’s tort docket for the years 2000 through 2009. The Court reversed 70% of the tort decisions it reviewed in 2000. The reversal rate then dipped for several years: 62.5% in 2001, 50% (2002), 55.6% (2003), 58.33% (2004), 50% (2005), 41.67% (2006), 42.86% (2007) and 57.14% in
Today, we’re reviewing the contents of our database, which includes every case decided by the Illinois Supreme Court since January 17, 1990. For every case, we’ve captured the following data points:
Official Reporter Citation
Docket Number
Case Name
Petitioner
Petitioner Governmental Entity (Y/N)
Respondent Governmental Entity (Y/N)
Source of Appellate Jurisdiction
Originating
Last time, we began our analysis by addressing the competing theories of judicial behavior. Formalism, the oldest theory, teaches that judicial decision making can be explained and predicted based upon the facts, the applicable law and precedent and judicial deliberations – and nothing more. But if formalism explains all of judicial decision making, then many
Our latest repost:
We begin our analysis by addressing the foundation of the entire body of data analytic scholarship on appellate judging: competing theories of judicial decision making.
The oldest theory by far is generally known in the literature as “formalism.” This is the theory we all learned in law school, according to which every
Our short series of contextual reposts continues:
Although the state Supreme Courts have not attracted anything near the level of study from academics engaged in empirical legal studies that the U.S. Supreme Courts and Federal Circuits have a number of different researchers have attempted to compare how influential the various state courts are for the
I’m always surprised when I encounter litigators who dismiss litigation analytics as a passing fad. In fact, as shown in the reprint post below, it’s a century-long academic enterprise which has produced many hundreds of studies conclusively proving through tens of thousands of pages of analysis the value of data analytics in better understanding how
The Illinois Supreme Court Review recently marked its sixth anniversary. In April, the California Supreme Court Review turns five.
So I thought it was time for a first: cross-posted reprints from the earliest days of the blogs. My early attempts to provide context for the work and to answer the question I often heard in
Yesterday, we began our review of the Supreme Court’s civil constitutional law cases from 1990 to 2019. Between 2005 and 2019, the Supreme Court decided 64 civil constitutional law cases. Thirty-three of the Court’s constitutional law cases involved challenges to state government actions, and these cases were evenly distributed across the fifteen years. Thirteen cases involved court process and procedure. Nine cases involved claims of individual rights and another nine involved challenges to local government actions.
Continue Reading What Kinds of Civil Constitutional Law Cases Does the Supreme Court Decide (Part 2 – 2005-2019)?