This time, we’re reviewing the share of appeals accounted for by final judgments in the 1990s. As a reminder, we’re defining “criminal” broadly to include quasi-criminal cases such as habeas corpus, as well as juvenile justice cases. Until 2011 when Illinois abolished the death penalty, we also include direct appeals to the Supreme Court from
We’ve all heard it any number of times: the appellate courts only review final judgments. Even if you can figure out a theory to take a non-final judgment up, the appellate courts won’t decide it on the grounds that it isn’t necessary – let it percolate out, and maybe the case will settle, or the
So we’ve determined that a dissent at the Appellate Court is only a moderate indication that reversal is statistically more likely at the Supreme Court in civil cases. So what about criminal cases?
Between 2010 and 2020, 64% of criminal cases with a dissent below were reversed at the Supreme Court. The reversal rate for
For the past two weeks, we’ve been continuing our review of the data on dissents at the Appellate Court, asking whether a dissent below indicates that a reversal at the Supreme Court is more likely. This time, we’re reviewing the data on civil cases for the years 2010 through 2020.
Across the entire period, once
Once again, a dissent at the Appellate Court was a strong indicator that the Supreme Court was more likely to reverse in criminal cases between 2000 and 2009. For the ten year period, 68.69% of cases with a dissenter below were reversed by the Supreme Court, while only 46.36% of cases decided unanimously at the
Just as was true in the 1990s, the presence of a dissenter at the Appellate Court was a mild-to-moderate indicator between 2000 and 2009 that a reversal was more likely in a civil case. Across the ten years, 61.4% of cases with a dissenter at the Appellate Court were reversed by the Supreme Court, while
A dissent below was a far stronger indicator of the likelihood of reversal at the Supreme Court in criminal cases between 1990 and 1999 than it was on the civil side. For the entire period, 63.51% of cases with a dissent below ended in reversal at the Supreme Court. Only 44.77% of cases decided unanimously
For the next three weeks, we’ll be reviewing data closely related to our just-concluded look at dissents below and at the Supreme Court. This time, we’re asking a related question – is the Supreme Court more likely to reverse when there’s a dissent below? Or to put it another way – is there reason to
In criminal cases between 2005 and 2020, dissents at the Appellate Court were more common than divided decisions in criminal cases in seven of sixteen years: 2005, 2008, 2010-2011, 2014-2015, 2018. In 2007, 2016 and 2020, the percentages were identical. In 2006, 28% of criminal cases had a dissent at the Supreme Court to 22%
Last week, we reviewed the year-by-year data comparing the dissent rate at the Appellate Court to the percentage of divided civil decisions at the Supreme Court, investigating whether dissent below signals a higher likelihood of a divided decision. This week, we’re looking at the data for the years 2005 through 2020, civil first.
In eight