Yesterday, we began our retrospective of the tenure of Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, who will retire on August 31, 2017. We tracked the total number of cases, both civil and criminal, in which Justice Werdegar has participated, as well as looking at how frequently she filed opinions – majorities, concurrences and dissents – from year to year in civil and criminal cases.
Today, we consider two more statistics which suggest how Justice Werdegar’s voting patterns compare to the other Justices she has served with during her twenty-three years on the Court. In Table 194 below, we plot the percentage of civil cases each year in which Justice Werdegar voted to reverse against the Court’s overall reversal percentage. Overall, Justice Werdegar has voted to reverse in whole or in part in 542 of the 969 civil cases she has participated in – quite close to the Court-wide reversal rate. She has stayed quite close to the Court’s majority for most of her tenure, as her personal reversal rate has seldom strayed more than a few points above or below the courtwide average.
In Table 195, we plot the percentage of criminal cases each year in which Justice Werdegar voted to reverse against the Court’s overall reversal percentage on that side of the docket. Overall, Justice Werdegar has voted to verse in whole or in part in 526 of the 1,286 criminal cases in which she has participated – 40.9% of the time. Although the gap betweeen Justice Werdegar’s reversal rate and the Courtwide average has occasionally gotten a bit higher than on the civil side, for most of her tenure the same conclusion applies – Justice Werdegar’s voting patterns have been quite close to the Court’s majority view.
In Table 196, we consider the year-by-year percentage of civil cases in which Justice Werdegar has been in the majority. Overall, Justice Werdegar has voted with the majority in 888 of 969 civil cases – 91.64%. In sixteen of her twenty-three years, she has voted with the majority in at least nine of every ten cases (1994-95, 1997-99, 2002-05, 2008-09, 2011-13, 2015 and 2017). Her lowest-ever percentage of majority votes was in 2001, when she still voted with the majority 76.6% of the time.
Finally, in Table 197, we report the percentage of criminal cases in which Justice Werdegar has voted with the majority. Overall, she has voted with the majority in 1,201 of 1,286 criminal and quasi-criminal matters – 93.39%. In eighteen of her twenty-three years, her majority percentage has been 90% or more (1994-1996, 1998, 2001-04, 2007-10 and 2012-2017). Justice Werdegar’s lowest-ever percentage of majority votes in criminal cases was in 2011, when she voted with the majority 74% of the time, while she voted with the majority in every criminal case in 1996 and so far in 2017.
Join us back here next Thursday as our analysis of Justice Werdegar’s voting record continues.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Kai Schreiber (no changes).