Today, we’re reviewing the data for the average lag time between oral argument and decision in civil cases at the Supreme Court.

During the 1990s, the average time increased significantly.  In 1990, there was an average of 61.56 days’ wait from argument to decision.  That dropped to 59.23 (1991), 56.42 (1992) and 59.26 (1993), before gradually edging up to 64.57 (1994), 69.44 (1995) and 65.84 (1996).  In 1997, the average lag time was 73.24 days.  In 1998, the average rose to 76.15 days.  In 1999, the average was 72.98 days.

For the most part, the average remained in the 70-day range between 2000 and 2009.  In 2000, the average was 76.35 days.  In 2001, it dropped slightly to 69.65 days.  From 2002 to 2005, the average stayed over 70 days – 75.46 days (2002), 74.05 days (2003), 71.64 days (2004) and 70.02 days (2005).  The average fell to 67.68 days in 2006, but rose to 70.13 in 2007 and 72.35 in 2008 before falling a bit to 68.25 days in 2009.

Between 2010 and 2013, the average wait dropped a bit: 64.4 days (2010), 61.33 (2011), 69.5 (2012), and 69.63 (2013).  For the rest of the decade, the average remained at the trend level – 70.35 (2014), 74.81 (2015), 78.97 (2016), 78.81 (2017), 79.18 (2018) and 79.48 (2019).

In Table 1153, we report the entire thirty years’ data in a single Table.  The data shows the gradual increase from an average lag time of 60-70 days from argument to decision until about 1995 to an average of 70-80 days for the remainder of the period.

Join us back here tomorrow as we review a new question about our lag time data.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Darron Birgenheier (no changes).