This week, we conclude our analysis of trends in the length of the Court’s opinions with a look at the Justices’ dissents.
First, let’s turn to the most fundamental question – just how common are dissents? The data reported in Table 345 is not total cases in which at least one dissent was filed, which
Yesterday, we reviewed trends in the Illinois Supreme Court’s special concurrences in civil cases. Today, we turn to the criminal docket.
We report the data in Table 344 below. We noted yesterday that special concurrences tended to be somewhat longer in non-unanimous decisions, speculating that concurrences might be used at times to respond to points
Last week, we completed our examination of trends in the length of the Illinois Supreme Court’s majority opinions. This week, we turn our attention to the Court’s special concurrences.
First, a preliminary question. Concurring opinions are a somewhat controversial subject in appellate law; some people have suggested that they tend to detract from the impact
Today, we conclude our look at the evolution of the Court’s majority opinions with a look at the criminal docket between 2008 and 2015. Last week, we observed two trends in the data. First, majority opinions in non-unanimous decisions were consistently longer than majorities in unanimous decisions – and the margin between non-unanimous and unanimous
Last week, we started working on a new question – how has the length of the Illinois Supreme Court’s majority opinions evolved in civil and criminal cases since 2000? Last week, we reviewed the years 2000-2007; this week, we’ll look at the years 2008 through 2015.
The data for civil cases is reported in Table
Yesterday, we began our analysis of how the Illinois Supreme Court’s majority opinions have changed in the past sixteen years with a look at the civil docket between 2000 and 2007. Today, we review the data for the criminal docket during the same years.
Once again, majority opinions in non-unanimous cases tended to be longer
Today, we begin a new topic in our analysis of the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision making – the average length of the Court’s majority, special concurrence and dissenting opinions.
In Table 338 below, we report the average length of majority opinions in civil cases between 2000 and 2007, divided into non-unanimous and unanimous decisions of
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