Last time, we reviewed the data on the distribution of majority opinions in criminal cases from 1990 to 2018. This time, we’re reviewing the lengths of each Justice’s majorities.
In 1990, Justice Stamos led at 35.83 pages, and Justice Calvo averaged 31 pages. Chief Justice Moran averaged 17.2 pages. In 1991, Justice Cunningham averaged 46
Over the past two weeks, we’ve reviewed the data on the distribution of the Court’s majority opinions in civil cases, and which Justice wrote the longest and shortest majorities each year. Today, we’re reviewing the data in criminal cases.
In our first table, we review the data for 1990 to 1996. In 1990, Justice Stamos
Yesterday, we began reviewing the Justice-by-Justice data for majority opinions in civil cases, beginning with the total number of majorities written each year. Today, we’re looking at the average length of each Justice’s majority opinions in civil cases.
In 1990, Justice Stamos averaged 25.8 pages per majority opinion, while Chief Justice Moran averaged 10.4 pages.
For the past several weeks, we’ve been looking for insights into the Court’s decision-making processes by reviewing the data for the length of the Court’s opinions. This week and next, we’re looking at a related question: which Justices tended to write the longest and shortest majority opinions. This week, the civil side. We’ll take the
Last time, we took our first look at a new question: do majority opinions in civil cases tend to be longer when the Court reverses than when it affirms? The answer, for a substantial majority of years, was yes. So today and tomorrow, we’re looking at the flipside: are reversals longer in criminal cases too?
Yesterday, we took a closer look at last week’s analysis of the unanimity rate, asking how much of the docket was accounted for by one, two and three dissenter cases. Over the entire period 1990-2017, 12.86% of the criminal decisions had one dissenter, 10.65% had two – both slightly below the rate in civil cases
Last week, we discussed the evolution of the Court’s rate of unanimity in civil cases. But of course, that analysis omits important variables – how was the dissent distributed? It tells us something very different if, for example, the entire group of divided decisions were 6-1 or 4-3. So this week, we’re looking at that
Yesterday, we began our review of how the Court’s unanimity rate has changed over time with a review of the data for the civil docket. Today, we’re looking at the criminal docket. For the entire twenty-eight years, the Court has decided 1,540 cases and been unanimous in 67.86% – less than a point higher than
This week, we’re turning our attention to a new issue, comparing the evolution of the Court’s unanimity rate in civil and criminal cases over time. Between 1990 and 2017, the Court decided 1,363 civil cases, 67.06% of them unanimously.
In Table 890, we report the yearly numbers from 1990 to 1996. In 1990, the Court’s
Yesterday, we began a multi-day crossover post comparing the Illinois and California Supreme Courts’ civil (and later in the week, criminal) dockets, how they compare to each other and how they evolved over time. Today, we’re comparing the Courts’ dockets from 2004 to 2017.
We showed last time that the Illinois Supreme Court decided 139