I remember many years ago my first-year Criminal Law professor telling us that you can always tell within the first five pages how an appellate criminal law case involving violent crime will come out: if it reads like a slasher movie, the defendant has lost. If you get well into the opinion and are wondering
How Has the Length of the Court’s Opinions in Criminal Cases Changed Over Time (Part 2)?
Yesterday, we reviewed the Court’s year-by-year experience with the length of its opinions (majorities, special concurrences and dissents) in criminal cases for the years 1990 through 2003. Today, we’re looking at the years 2004 through 2017.
The average majority opinion declined in length after about 1996, and its downward drift continued during this period. In
How Has the Length of the Court’s Opinions in Criminal Cases Changed Over Time (Part 1)?
Last week, we began our study of the length of the Court’s opinions since 1990 with a look at the civil docket, looking at such questions as whether opinions are getting consistently longer or shorter, and whether longer dissents are related, all other things being equal, to longer majority opinions. This week, we’re looking at
How Has the Length of the Court’s Opinions in Civil Cases Evolved Over Time (Part 2)?
In our last post, we addressed the yearly average length of the Court’s opinions in civil cases for the year 1990 through 2003. Today, we’re looking at the years 2004 through 2017. In doing so, we’re looking for evidence on two questions: first, are opinions getting shorter or longer over time; and second, do longer
How Has the Length of the Court’s Opinions in Civil Cases Evolved Over Time (Part 1)?
This week, we take up a new topic: how has the length of the Court’s opinions – majority opinions, special concurrences and dissents – evolved over the past twenty-eight years? We’ll review the civil docket this week – today on the years 1990-2003 and tomorrow on 2004-2017 – and then turn to the criminal docket
Were Majority Opinions in Death Penalty Cases Longer or Shorter When the Court Reversed?
Yesterday, we began reviewing the data on majority opinions in death penalty cases from 1990 through the Court’s last death penalty appeal in 2010. Today, we look at a related question: did the Court’s majority opinions tend to run longer when the Court was partially or fully reversing?
Interestingly, across the entire twenty year period,
Who Wrote the Court’s Majority Opinions in Death Penalty Cases?
For the past two weeks, we’ve been studying death penalty appeals, both here and on the California Supreme Court Review blog. This week, we turn our attention to the authors of the Court’s majority opinions in death penalty cases.
Once again, we divide the cases into four results: (1) affirmance; (2) partial reversal with sentence
How Likely Is It That the First Question in a Criminal Case Comes From a Justice Writing the Majority, a Concurrence or a Dissent?
Yesterday, we looked at the likelihood that the first question to each side at oral argument in civil cases came from a Justice who would write an opinion – either the majority, a special concurrence or a dissent. Today, we turn our attention to the Court’s criminal cases between 2008 and 2016.
Beginning with appellants,
How Likely Is It That the First Question in a Civil Case Comes From a Justice Writing the Majority, a Concurrence or a Dissent?
Today, we turn our analysis of the Illinois Supreme Court’s oral arguments between 2008 and 2016 to a new question: how likely is it that the Justice who asks the first question in a civil case is writing an opinion?
In Table 433 below, we report the percentage of instances in civil cases in which
Do More Questions at Oral Argument Mean a Longer Majority Opinion (Part 2 – Criminal Docket)?
Yesterday, we investigated whether a more active bench at oral argument in civil cases suggested that the majority opinion would be longer. Today, we look at the same question on the criminal side of the docket by tracking the correlation between total questions and the length of the majority opinion.
We report the data for