Last week, we showed that the most frequent area of criminal law for amicus briefs in California between 1990 and 1999 was criminal procedure (by a two-to-one margin). Following crim pro were constitutional law, sentencing law, juvenile issues and death penalty cases. So this week, we’re looking at the years 2000 through 2009.
Once again,
This week, we’re in part two of the latest phase of our amicus deep dive, reviewing two questions: (1) given that California sees more amicus briefs than any state court of last resort in the country, what areas of law are drawing the most activity; and (2) reviewing each area of law we identify, are
Today, we’re reviewing two issues on the criminal side of the docket – what areas of law produced the most amicus briefs and were more amicus briefs offensive – supporting the appellant and attacking the Court of Appeal decision – or defensive, supporting the respondent. We begin with the 1990s.
Constitutional law was the leading
This week, we’re continuing our look at the amicus brief data with two questions: (1) given how common amicus briefs are at the California Supreme Court, are briefs clustered more in cases involving certain areas of law than others; and (2) are more amicus briefs filed in California offensive – attacking an adverse Court of
With few exceptions, it’s remained true since 2005 that somewhere between one in four and one in five criminal cases at the California Supreme Court have at least one amicus brief. In 2005, 22.95% of the cases had one. That rose to 24.59% in 2009 and 24.68% in 2012. The percentage dropped off a bit
This week, we’re continuing our examination of the basic amicus brief filing data with the years 2005 through 2020. Although there was a one-year dip in 2004, for most of the period from 1997 to 2004, between eighty and ninety percent of all civil cases at the California Supreme Court had at least one amicus
This time, we’re looking at amicus filings in California criminal cases. Below, we chart the yearly percentage of criminal cases decided by the Supreme Court which drew at least one amicus brief. The figure started low at only 12.5% in 1990. It topped out at 32.76% in 1992, 48.78% in 1994 and 30.95% in 1996
[For the benefit of readers who don’t read both our Illinois and California blogs, the first paragraph immediately below is reprinted from our first post of this week on the Illinois Supreme Court Review.]
In the past twenty years, several academic researchers have extended the study of amicus briefs to state courts of
In 2010, Division Two of the Second District averaged six votes to affirm in cases not unanimously affirmed. Division Four of the Second averaged three votes and Division Four of the First and Division Three of the Second averaged two votes. In 2011, Division Three of the First District averaged six votes to affirm. Divisions
In 2010, one-third of civil decisions from Division Two of the Second District were affirmed unanimously. One-third of decisions from Division Two of the First and Division Three of the Second were. In 2011, half the decisions from Division Four of the First were affirmed unanimously, and one-third from Division One of the Second were.