This week, we’re reviewing Justice Theis’ history in oral arguments in civil cases. Having established that the party which gets more questions at argument overall is likely to lose, we’re trying to determine (1) whether each individual Justice follows that same pattern when she or he agrees with the majority; and (2) when he or
In criminal cases where the Chief Justice is voting with the majority, she tends to question the appellant more heavily regardless of the result – a break with the expected pattern. When joining an affirmance since the Court first started posting oral argument videos, she has averaged 1.71 questions to appellants and 1.08 to appellees.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been reviewing the oral argument data on individual Justices, trying to determine whether it’s possible to predict from the analytics whether a particular Justice is likely to dissent. This week, we’re looking at the numbers for Chief Justice Burke.
When the Chief Justice is in the majority, we see
Today, we’re reviewing the pattern of Justice Karmeier’s questions in oral argument on criminal cases.
When Justice Karmeier joins the majority of a simple affirmance or reversal, his questions show the expected pattern – he tends to more heavily question the losing side. In affirmances, he averages 1.88 questions to appellants and 0.68 to appellees.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been reviewing the oral argument questioning of individual Justices, attempting to answer this question: if the Court as a whole is likely to more heavily question the party who will lose the case, what about Justices planning to dissent from that result? This week, we’re looking at Justice Karmeier’s
Yesterday, we reviewed the data on Justice Kilbride’s oral arguments in civil cases. Today, we’re looking at the criminal cases.
As you can see from the Table below, Justice Kilbride asks very few questions in criminal oral arguments. When he’s in the majority of an affirmance, he averages 0.48 questions to appellants, 0.3 to appellees.
A few weeks ago, we established that court-wide, the party which is likely to lose tends to get the most questions in oral argument. Now, we’re investigating individual Justices’ records – when the Justice agrees with the majority, does he or she follow the usual pattern, and when he or she doesn’t agree, does the
Last time, we reviewed Justice Garman’s record in oral arguments in civil cases, both when she agreed with the majority and when she didn’t. Today, we’re reviewing the criminal docket.
Once again we begin with cases in which the Court affirms. When Justice Garman agrees, she more heavily questions the losing appellant, 2.44 to 0.79.
For the last two weeks, we’ve been looking at the court-wide data for questions at oral argument. We discussed the academic research into oral argument questions, which demonstrates that at the U.S. Supreme Court, the party which will lose the case generally gets the most questions. We then looked at the data for the Illinois
Last week, we reviewed the academic literature studying oral argument analytics, and then compared the data for civil and criminal cases, both affirmances and reversals, to the outcome of those earlier studies. This week, we’re digging deeper on that work. For last week’s comparison, we aggregated outright reversals and split decisions: “affirmed in part, reversed in part.” Now let’s disaggregate – compare outright reversals to split decisions.
Continue Reading Can You Predict a Split Decision in Civil Cases at the Illinois Supreme Court After Oral Argument?