Divided Appellate Court Decisions

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,

17257646452_bdf0b881b8_z (1)

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