Last time, we showed that between 1990 and 1999, as majority opinions in civil cases got substantially shorter, unanimity became significantly more common. What about the criminal docket?
The effect on the criminal side of the docket was even more noticeable.
In 1990, the average majority opinion in a criminal case was 25.97 pages. By
At the outset of this series of posts, we noted that analytic research has shown a connection between the length of majority opinions and the unanimity rate. So my next step, now that we’ve reviewed the caseload data from the Appellate Court, will be to compare the unanimity rate to the average length of majority
Today, we’re looking at the data for the criminal docket at the Supreme Court during the 1990s – specifically (1) the total caseload; (2) the total number of pages of majority opinions written and (3) the average length of the Court’s majority opinions in criminal cases.
For the entire decade, the Court decided 611 cases.
This week, we’re turning our attention from the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court’s docket.
We’ll be reviewing three questions in order to analyze the impact of the slow decline in cases at the Appellate Court: (1) did the Supreme Court’s caseload decline? (2) Was the Supreme Court writing less in majority opinions? And (3)
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
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