For the past two weeks, we’ve been taking our first look at the composition of the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets, reviewing the sources of appellate jurisdiction from which the Court’s cases are drawn. Today, we begin the final week of our analysis, covering the years 2011 to 2015.
Final judgments were a
Yesterday, we continued our analysis of the civil and criminal dockets at the California Supreme Court over the past sixteen years with a look at the jurisdictional sources of the civil docket between 2006 and 2010. Today, we turn to the criminal docket during those same years.
As we showed last week, review of final
Last week, we began our analysis of the civil and criminal dockets at the California Supreme Court with the years 2000 through 2005. Today, we take a look at the civil cases the Court decided between 2006 and 2010.
Final judgments declined somewhat as a percentage of the civil caseload in 2006 at 50.94% of
Earlier today, we addressed the jurisdictional sources of the California Supreme Court’s civil docket for the first six years of our period of study, 2000-2005. Now, we turn to the criminal docket for those same years.
Largely because of the mandatory death penalty docket, final judgments are routinely a smaller fraction of the Court’s criminal
Yesterday, we reviewed the variables which make up our sixteen year database. Today, we turn to our first question – comparing the jurisdictional sources of the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets.
We report the breakdown for the civil docket in 2000 in Table 2 below. Final judgments appealed under C.C.P. 904.1(a)(1) comprised 77.55%
Last week, we reviewed the primary theories of judicial decision making, including two – attitudinalism and legal realism – which are the foundation for empirical research into appellate decision making. Today, we begin our review of the data.
Between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2015, the California Supreme Court published 1,602 decisions – 636
Yesterday, we began our analysis by addressing the competing theories of judicial behavior. Formalism, the oldest theory, teaches that judicial decision making can be explained and predicted based upon the facts, the applicable law and precedent and judicial deliberations – and nothing more. But if formalism explains all of judicial decision making, then many of
We begin our analysis by addressing the foundation of the entire body of data analytic scholarship on appellate judging: competing theories of judicial decision making.
The oldest theory by far is generally known in the literature as “formalism.” This is the theory we all learned in law school, according to which every decision turns on
It was inevitable, of course, that we at Sedgwick Appellate would turn our data analytic approach to the work of the California Supreme Court. California is where Sedgwick was founded and grew into an international law firm, our appellate group has several experienced lawyers resident in California, and it continues (even after twelve years resident
The application of data analytic techniques to the study of judicial decision making arguably begins with political scientist Charles Grove Haines’ 1922 article in the Illinois Law Review, General Observations on the Effects of Personal, Political, and Economic Influences in the Decisions of Judges. (17 Ill. L. Rev. 96 (1922)). Reviewing the records