Long-time readers may have noticed that a few things have changed around here in recent days. And that brings us to our two exciting announcements.
First, I’ve moved my practice to the San Francisco office of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP.
I’ve known and respected Arnold & Porter for its brilliant lawyers and its
This time, we’re reviewing the reversal rates in civil cases from 1990 to 2020 for the areas of California outside of Los Angeles’ Second District – the First District (San Francisco) and the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Districts.
Division 4 of the First District had the worst reversal rate in this group – 74.07%.
This week, we’re beginning a detailed look at the reversal rates, District by District and Division by Division, for the Court of Appeal in the Supreme Court. First up, reversal rates for Los Angeles’ Second District.
Between 1990 and 2020, Division Four of the Second District had the highest reversal rate at 68.18%. Division One
This time, we’re comparing the lag time from grant to decision in criminal cases to the ultimate case result. In order not to bias the data, we begin by eliminating the death penalty and habeas corpus cases, where the determinants of lag time are quite different than non-death criminal cases.
Once again, there is a
This week, we’re looking at the relationship between lag time – the number of days from the grant of review by the Supreme Court to the final decision – and the result in the case. One might expect that lag time has very little relationship to the case result – surely it’s determined by the
Last time, we reviewed the Court’s civil cases, asking whether divided decisions from the Court of Appeal were more likely to be reversed in whole or in part than unanimous ones. This time, we’re turning our attention to the criminal cases and finding a very different result.
In only four of the past thirty-one years
Two weeks ago, we addressed the question of how common cases with a dissent at the Court of Appeal were on the Supreme Court’s docket. Our analysis illuminated the issue of whether it’s true that there’s no point in pursuing a petition for review from a unanimous Court of Appeal decision.
This week, we’re digging
Last time, we reviewed the share of the Supreme Court’s civil caseload made up of decisions with a dissenter at the Court of Appeal. Now let’s look at the criminal cases.
It turns out dissenters are even less important on the criminal side. In 1990, only 1.25% of the criminal docket had a dissenter below.
Last week we looked at the frequently heard claim that getting Supreme Court review of an unpublished decision of the Court of Appeal is a hopeless task. This week, we’re looking at a similar bit of conventional wisdom – the Supreme Court doesn’t review unanimous decisions from the Court of Appeal.
In the table below,
Last time, we showed that for the most part since 1990, anywhere from twenty to forty-five percent of the Court’s civil decisions have arisen from unpublished decisions at the Court of Appeal. This time we’re looking at the Court’s criminal docket.
Unpublished Court of Appeal decisions are far from the exception in criminal cases –