Last time, we showed that between 1990 and 1999, as majority opinions in civil cases got substantially shorter, unanimity became significantly more common. What about the criminal docket?
The effect on the criminal side of the docket was even more noticeable.
In 1990, the average majority opinion in a criminal case was 25.97 pages. By
At the outset of this series of posts, we noted that analytic research has shown a connection between the length of majority opinions and the unanimity rate. So my next step, now that we’ve reviewed the caseload data from the Appellate Court, will be to compare the unanimity rate to the average length of majority
Today, we’re looking at the data for the criminal docket at the Supreme Court during the 1990s – specifically (1) the total caseload; (2) the total number of pages of majority opinions written and (3) the average length of the Court’s majority opinions in criminal cases.
For the entire decade, the Court decided 611 cases.
This week, we’re turning our attention from the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court’s docket.
We’ll be reviewing three questions in order to analyze the impact of the slow decline in cases at the Appellate Court: (1) did the Supreme Court’s caseload decline? (2) Was the Supreme Court writing less in majority opinions? And (3)
This time, we’re wrapping up this multi-part post, reviewing the trial court data for the civil cases from the Fifth District between 2020 and 2022.
The Court has decided eleven cases since the beginning of 2020. In 2020, there were two cases from Madison County and one each from Williamson, Effingham, Randolph and Franklin. In
This time, we’re reviewing the civil cases from the Fourth District reviewed by the Supreme Court in the first third of this decade, from 2020 to 2022-to-date.
Spoiler alert: there weren’t many. The Court reviewed one civil case from Adams County in 2020. In 2021, the Court decided one case from McLean and one from
This time, we’re reviewing the county-level data on the Third District civil cases reviewed by the Supreme Court between 2020 and 2022 (so far).
The Court decided no Third District civil cases in 2020. In 2021, there were three cases from Will County and one each originating in Grundy, Putnam and Kankakee counties. So far
This time, we’re wrapping up our four-part post by reviewing the county-by-county data for the first third of the current decade: 2020-2022.
In the past three years, the Supreme Court has reviewed ten civil cases from the Second District. In 2021, there were four cases from Lake County. In 2020, there were one each from
Madison and St. Clair counties account for well over half of the population of the Fifth District counties which produced cases in the past decade – 29.09% in Madison, 28.17% in St. Clair. Williamson was 7.35%, Jackson had 5.8%, Franklin was 4.14%, Marion was 4.13% and Jefferson County had 4.06%. Clinton County accounted for 4.04%.
Today, we’re completing our trip through the reversal rates for the Districts of the Appellate Court, divided by areas of civil law. For this final post, we’re looking at the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Districts for the years 2010 through 2019.
The overall reversal rate for these districts was 100% in employment law, property