129437223_ee69e61ff2_zYesterday, we concluded our review of the individual Justices’ writing between 2000 and 2004 with a look at the dissents. Today, we turn to the majority opinions between 2005 and 2009.

With the election of Justice Lloyd Karmeier in 2004, the Court shifted from a 5-2 to a 4-3 majority for Justices elected as Democrats. In the five years following that shift, Justices Garman and Fitzgerald were the most frequent writers for the Court, followed by Justice Freeman. Justice Garman wrote for the majority somewhat more often during this period than her Republican colleagues, Justice Karmeier and Chief Justice Thomas. Because of the press of administrative duties, the incumbent Chief Justice tends to write somewhat fewer opinions than he or she ordinarily would.

Table 25_A

As we saw with the overall data, the Court’s civil opinions were slightly longer during this second five-year period. Measured over the entire five year period, Justice Garman tended to write slightly longer majority opinions than her colleagues, although Justice Thomas’ floating three-year average for the 2007-2009 period was the highest on the Court by the end of this period.

Table 25_B

Next week, we’ll conclude our look at the 2005-2009 period with a review of the Justices’ concurrences and dissents.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Ken Lund (no changes).

6623181715_da9ec3523d_zLast week, we began our review of the individual Justices’ writing with a close look at the majority and concurring decisions for the first five years of our study period, 2000-2004. Today we turn to the Court’s dissents over the same period.

The Court’s most common dissenters between 2000 and 2004 were three of the Court’s more liberal members: Chief Justice Moses Harrison (2000-2002) and Justices Charles Freeman and Thomas Kilbride.

Table 24_A

Justice Freeman’s civil dissents, on average, were significantly longer than those filed by other Justices. In contrast, although Chief Justice Harrison and Justices Kilbride and Garman dissented relatively often, their dissents tended to be roughly the same length as the other members of the Court.

Table 24_B

Tomorrow, we’ll begin our review of the second five years with the individual Justices’ majority opinions between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Paul Sableman (no changes).

5985770093_b422f8930a_zYesterday, we began looking at the Justices’ writing of majority opinions during the initial five years of our study period, 2000-2004. Today, we turn to special concurrences.

Special concurrences are a rare phenomenon at the Court. Interestingly, Justice Charles Freeman wrote nearly three times as many concurrences in civil cases as any other Justice on the Court:

Table 23_A

The Justices’ concurrences tend to be quite short, with all aside from Chief Justice McMorrow and Justice Freeman averaging no more than one or two pages apiece:

Table 23_B

Next week, we turn to the Court’s dissents in the first five years of our study period, and then we turn to our attention to the Justices’ writing between 2005 and 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Jim Bowen (no changes).

3844701686_507e8cc0e0_zNow we turn to the records of the individual Justices. Having addressed the trends in the length of the Court’s opinions, we turn now to the Justices’ writing. Have certain Justices, on average, tended to write longer opinions than other members of the Court? Because each Justice writes between four and eight civil majority opinions each year, and even fewer special concurrences and dissents, we once again report floating three-year averages in order to ensure that random variations do not cause exaggerated changes in the statistics.

Between 2000 and 2004, the Justices’ writing patterns were similar. During this initial five years, Chief Justice Mary Ann McMorrow and Justice Charles Freeman wrote the largest number of opinions, followed by Justice Thomas Kilbride and Justice Thomas Fitzgerald, and then Justices Robert Thomas and Justice Rita Garman.

Table 22_A_1

Chief Justice Mary Ann McMorrow wrote somewhat longer opinions than her colleagues, but this is not necessarily surprising, since the Chief Justice traditionally tends to take responsibility for the most highly publicized cases. Several of the Justices who left the Court during these early years show a shorter mean opinion length, but as noted above, these Justices’ averages are based on fewer opinions. Justices Garman, Freeman and Thomas, each of whom joined the Court during this era, began their tenures writing opinions of similar length.

Table 22_B_1

Tomorrow, we turn to special concurrences in civil cases between 2000 and 2004.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Anne Swoboda (no changes).

Update: Our thanks to an alert reader who spotted an omission in an earlier version of the post, which has now been corrected.

2678306311_27b4b0d2ff_zYesterday, we addressed the Illinois Supreme Court’s standards for granting leave to file amicus briefs. Today, we turn to the data.

Civil cases which attract no amicus briefs are rare before the United States Supreme Court and a few of the state Supreme Courts, such as California. Multiple-amicus cases are not uncommon, and cases with dozens of amicus briefs are not entirely unheard of. But the mean number of amicus briefs filed in civil cases before the Illinois Supreme Court has remained low throughout our study period:

Table 30

Next week, we’ll turn to the writings of the individual Justices who have sat on the Illinois Supreme Court between 2000 and 2014.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Steve Cornelius (no changes).

 

8122523_ab151ea98b_zThe role of amicus curiae briefs in litigation before state Supreme Courts has been receiving scholarly attention during the past several years. Some have suggested that some interest groups have begun to see appellate litigation as merely another political arena in which to promote their policy goals.[1] Others have suggested that the explosion of amicus curiae briefs is both unnecessarily burdening the appellate courts and has been responsible for the perception that the opinions coming from those courts are getting longer.

As we’ve shown in earlier posts, whatever trend exists in other appellate courts toward longer opinions has not affected the Illinois Supreme Court, at least to date. One possible contributing factor: there is little tradition in this state of heavy amicus participation at the appellate level. With the Supreme Court’s docket not yet online, it is difficult to be certain whether this is due to a lack of applications for leave to file, because the Court often denies applications, or both.[2]

One of the Court’s most recent written statements on the subject of amicus briefs was in an unpublished 2006 order in Kinkel v. Cingular Wireless, LLC denying an application for leave to file a brief in support of the appellant.

“By definition,” the Court wrote, “an amicus curiae is a friend of the court, not of the parties.” Whether or not to grant leave to file a petition depends on “whether the brief will provide it with ideas, arguments, or insights helpful to resolution of the case that were not addressed by the litigants themselves.” The Court echoes comments by appellate justices in a great many jurisdictions, writing that “Briefs which essentially restate arguments advanced by the litigants are of no benefit to the court or the adversarial process. To the contrary, they are a burden on the court’s time . . .”

The Court endorsed the Seventh Circuit’s criteria for amicus briefs as a “useful guide” in applying the criteria of Supreme Court Rule 345: “(1) when a party is not competently represented or not represented at all; or (2) when the would-be amicus has a direct interest in another case, and the case in which he seeks permission to file an amicus curiae brief may, by operation of stare decisis or res judicata, materially effect that interest; or (3) when the amicus has a unique perspective, or information, that can assist the court beyond the help that the lawyers for parties are able to provide.”

Tomorrow, we’ll examine the yearly mean numbers of amicus briefs in civil cases before the Illinois Supreme Court between 2000 and 2014.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Wendy Seltzer (no changes).

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[1]           E.g., Comparato, Amici Curiae and Strategic Behavior in State Supreme Courts.

[2]           The data in tomorrow’s post should be treated with some caution, since it is based on the Court’s identifying amicus curiae in its opinions. It seems unlikely, given how often the Court notes the presence of amici, that such briefs go unremarked upon often. Indeed, the data above may slightly overstate the level of amicus participation. When the Court simply listed a number of different entities, unless the Court made it clear that several had joined in a single brief (or the counsel list reflected one law firm representing multiple entities), each entity was counted separately.

497364007_b28f03366a_zYesterday, we addressed the length of majority opinions at the Illinois Supreme Court between 2000 and 2014. Today, we turn to concurrences and dissents.

Because they are structured differently, we expect special concurrences and dissents to follow the lead of the majority opinion in the same case: longer where the case is more complex, shorter for the simpler cases. The data suggests that dissents may be getting slightly longer, while special concurrences remain uniformly brief:

Table 20 C

Next week, we’ll turn to another topic in analyzing the Court’s decision-making: the role of amicus curiae briefs.

Image courtesy of Flickr by UmJaneDoan (no changes).

14072743_8bb9d37402_zThis week, we turn to another subject in our analysis of the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision making in civil cases – what determines the length of the Court’s opinions?

Majority opinions are not only comparatively short at the Illinois Supreme Court – they appear to be getting shorter:

Table 20 A

We would expect majority opinions in divided courts to be at least slightly longer, given the need for a majority to address the major points raised by dissenting colleagues. But at the Illinois Supreme Court, majority opinions for divided courts have not been significantly longer than the Court’s unanimous opinions:

Table 20 B

Tomorrow, we’ll turn to the Court’s concurrences and dissents.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Jason Llagan (no changes).

480388989_64024e8c2a_zToday we return to our intensive look at reversal rates at the Illinois Supreme Court, disaggregated by the area of the law, for the period 2010-2014.

During this final study period, the Court continued to reverse liberal tort decisions from the Appellate Court at a significantly higher rate than conservative ones in the fields of tort, civil procedure and government/administrative law. The Court has been quite skeptical of constitutional claims as well, reversing two-thirds of liberal Appellate Court decisions in that arena, while disturbing very few conservative decisions.   The Court has heard only two liberal Appellate Court decisions involving issues of insurance law, but in both cases, the Court has reversed. In contrast, the Court’s reversal rate for liberal insurance law decisions has been very much in line with the Court’s general patterns.

Table 19 C

Our review suggests that the interest in court-by-court reversal rates may obscure more interesting trends. During the fifteen years we studied, the Court has accepted significantly more liberal decisions than conservative ones in the fields of tort, insurance law and government and administrative law. The Court has reversed liberal decisions at a significantly higher rate in the fields of tort, constitutional law, insurance and government and administrative law. On the other hand, the Court has reversed conservative decisions significantly more often in the fields of domestic relations and workers compensation.

Next week, we’ll turn to an entirely different subject: the length of the Court’s opinions.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Urban Feel (no changes).

2597975667_fee825c080_zFor the last two weeks, we’ve been taking an intensive look at reversal rates before the Illinois Supreme Court, disaggregated by areas of law, for the past fifteen years.

We turn finally to the 2010-2014 period – with the exception of Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald’s ten-month service in 2010, the tenure of the current seven Justices. During these four and a half years, the share of the civil docket occupied by tort law cases has remained relatively constant. Civil procedure, domestic relations and constitutional law are shifting, however – civil procedure and domestic relations cases have significantly increased, and constitutional law cases are down. Insurance and workers compensation are significantly down as a portion of the Court’s civil docket as well.

Table 19 A

Where the Court’s civil caseload has been relatively evenly distributed during the previous five years between conservative and liberal Appellate Court decisions, since 2010 the Court has tended to accept more liberal Appellate Court decisions in the fields of tort, insurance and government and administrative law:

Table 19 B

Tomorrow we’ll continue our close look at the Court’s reversal rates between 2010 and 2014.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Josiah MacKenzie (no changes).