Now we turn our attention to the criminal docket. First, we review the data for complete reversal – divided decisions from the Court of Appeal versus unanimous decisions. In six of the past thirty-one years, the reversal rate for unanimous Court of Appeal decisions has exceeded that for divided ones. The rest of the time,
Yesterday, we began our investigation of the importance of dissents at the Appellate Court for litigation at the Illinois Supreme Court. We demonstrated that the often-heard claim that obtaining review at the Court is impossible without an Appellate Court dissent isn’t true, either on the civil or the criminal side. Today, we address a related
Last week, we wrapped up our review of the areas of law addressed by the Illinois Supreme Court in its civil and criminal dockets, year by year from 2000 through 2015. Today we begin a new topic – dissents at the Appellate Court. One frequently hears that there’s little chance of getting a PLA granted
Last week, we took a break from our data analytics work on the Illinois Supreme Court’s oral arguments between 2008 and 2014 for a statistical preview of two big cases from the upcoming September term. Today we resume our statistical search for indicators of what kinds of cases are more likely to spark heavier questioning
This week, we’re attempting to answer the question: does a dissent at the Appellate Court help in getting Supreme Court review? And if so – how much?
Yesterday, we considered the prevalence of dissent in Appellate Court opinions. Now we turn to the data.
As it turns out, this is one bit of conventional wisdom
In our last several posts, we’ve been following the Supreme Court’s evolving interests over the past fifteen years, charting the areas of law considered by the Court in its civil docket.
Now we turn to a somewhat different question. It has long been part of the conventional wisdom in the appellate bar that a dissent