This time, we’re looking at the oral arguments in civil cases in 2018. For new readers, you can review the history of data analytics for oral arguments here.
For civil cases decided last year, the Court asked 958 questions of appellants and 889 of appellees – an average of 29.03 questions to appellants and 26.94 questions to appellees. A bit of context – as shown in our posts earlier this week at the Illinois Supreme Court Review, the Illinois Supreme Court averaged less than half as many questions to appellants and appellees.
As shown in the discussion of the history of oral argument analytics, the losing party tends to get more questions. For civil cases decided in 2018, the Court averaged 27.64 questions to appellants and 18.79 to appellees.
What about split decisions, where the Court affirmed in part and reversed in part? In split civil decisions decided in 2018, the Court averaged 33.25 questions of appellants and 27.75 questions of appellees.
When the Court reversed, appellants got an average of 29.45 questions to 35.73 questions to appellees.
Join us back here next time as we continue our review of the 2018 data.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Will Buckner (no changes).