This week, we’re reporting the data for the Supreme Court’s civil and criminal cases during the years 2000 through 2009.
Once again, Cook County led by a wide margin, accounting for 172 civil cases. Du Page and Lake counties – the second and third largest counties by population – were next, followed by the Industrial
In this post, we report the originating jurisdictions for the Court’s criminal cases during the years 1990 through 1999. Once again, we omit Cook County from the chart to make it more readable; Cook County produced 268 criminal cases during the nineties. Lake County, the third biggest county in terms of population, is second in
This week, we’re looking at where the Supreme Court’s cases originate. This is important for the same reason that tracking which Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court the Court is taking its cases from. Just as it’s possible for the Court to conclude that a particular part of the Appellate Court is out of
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
Now we turn our attention to the criminal docket. First, we review the data for complete reversal – divided decisions from the Court of Appeal versus unanimous decisions. In six of the past thirty-one years, the reversal rate for unanimous Court of Appeal decisions has exceeded that for divided ones. The rest of the time,