This week, we answer a new question in our study of the expanded Illinois Supreme Court data library: how have the Court’s civil cases been distributed among the various parts of the Appellate Court?
As of 1990, Cook County accounted for 44.66% of the total population of Illinois. So if caseload followed population distribution, one
Yesterday, we determined that a dissent below, all things being equal, will lead to at least a slightly more active oral argument for appellees. The data for appellants is more variable – the averages are virtually identical, but the numbers vary widely from case to case. So what’s the answer for criminal cases?
Between 2008
For the past several weeks, we’ve been comparing the level of questioning at the Court in civil and criminal cases to various facts about the underlying case, searching for factors which explain how active the Court is at oral argument. This week, we turn our attention to a new possibility: is a dissent at the
Yesterday, we gathered up our last several weeks’ work to assess the performance of the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court in civil cases before the Illinois Supreme Court. Today, we review the criminal docket.
The same court led among non-unanimous criminal decisions that led for non-unanimous civil cases – Division Five of the
For the past several weeks, we’ve been refining simple reversal rates as a measure of an Appellate Court’s standing by analyzing, District by District (and Division by Division), the average votes to affirm the Appellate Court. By doing so, we distinguish between decisions which are narrowly reversed by a sharply divided court, and those which
Today, we conclude our analysis of how the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court have fared at the Illinois Supreme Court with a final question – which courts have seen the largest fraction of their criminal decisions unanimously reversed between 2010 and 2015?
Unanimous reversals have been roughly as common in recent years as
For the past several weeks, we’ve been refining our analysis of how the Districts and Divisions of the Appellate Court have fared in the past sixteen years before the Illinois Supreme Court, calculating the average votes to affirm garnered by each District’s decisions on the civil and criminal docket. This week, we address the criminal
Today, we complete our review of the average votes to affirm, District by District of the Appellate Court, in the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil docket. Our final question – which Districts have had the largest fraction of their civil decisions unanimously reversed over the past six years (a votes-to-affirm of zero)?
As we noted yesterday,
For the past several weeks, we’ve been refining the most frequently seen measure of how an intermediate appellate court has fared before the Supreme Court – the simple reversal rate – by tracking the average votes to affirm, District by District, divided by non-unanimous and unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court. Today, we turn to
Yesterday, we began our look at the Illinois Supreme Court’s criminal docket for the years 2005 to 2009 by calculating average votes to affirm, District by District of the Appellate Court. Today, we ask a related question: what fraction of each District and Division’s criminal decisions were reversed unanimously by the Supreme Court – a