Last time, we began our examination of a new question: who has most often been a bellwether vote – a Justice who is nearly always in the majority in a divided decision – in civil cases? Then, we reviewed the years 1990-2003. Now, we’re taking a look at the years 2004-2018.
In Table 995, we
On the vast majority of appellate courts, there are one or two Justices of whom appellate specialists say “they’re the votes you’ve got to have” – or alternatively, “lose those votes and you’re hurting.” No matter the case, those Justices nearly always seem to be in the majority. There can be at least a couple
Last time, we reviewed the data on the distribution of majority opinions in criminal cases from 1990 to 2018. This time, we’re reviewing the lengths of each Justice’s majorities.
In 1990, Justice Stamos led at 35.83 pages, and Justice Calvo averaged 31 pages. Chief Justice Moran averaged 17.2 pages. In 1991, Justice Cunningham averaged 46
Over the past two weeks, we’ve reviewed the data on the distribution of the Court’s majority opinions in civil cases, and which Justice wrote the longest and shortest majorities each year. Today, we’re reviewing the data in criminal cases.
In our first table, we review the data for 1990 to 1996. In 1990, Justice Stamos
Yesterday, we began reviewing the Justice-by-Justice data for majority opinions in civil cases, beginning with the total number of majorities written each year. Today, we’re looking at the average length of each Justice’s majority opinions in civil cases.
In 1990, Justice Stamos averaged 25.8 pages per majority opinion, while Chief Justice Moran averaged 10.4 pages.
For the past several weeks, we’ve been looking for insights into the Court’s decision-making processes by reviewing the data for the length of the Court’s opinions. This week and next, we’re looking at a related question: which Justices tended to write the longest and shortest majority opinions. This week, the civil side. We’ll take the
Yesterday, we showed that in contrast to our result in civil cases, when majority opinions reversing tended most years to be longer than majority opinions affirming, the opposite was generally true in criminal cases – between 1990 and 2003, affirmances were longer. Today, we’re looking at the years 2004 to 2018.
In 2004, reversals were
Last time, we took our first look at a new question: do majority opinions in civil cases tend to be longer when the Court reverses than when it affirms? The answer, for a substantial majority of years, was yes. So today and tomorrow, we’re looking at the flipside: are reversals longer in criminal cases too?
Last time, we began looking at a new question: are majority opinions reversing the Appellate Court on average longer than majorities affirming the result below? Between 1990 and 2003, the answer was, most of the time, yes. This time, we’re looking at the data for civil cases between 2004 and 2018.
In Table 965, we
I remember many years ago my first-year Criminal Law professor telling us that you can always tell within the first five pages how an appellate criminal law case involving violent crime will come out: if it reads like a slasher movie, the defendant has lost. If you get well into the opinion and are wondering