We’ve all heard it any number of times: the appellate courts only review final judgments. Even if you can figure out a theory to take a non-final judgment up, the appellate courts won’t decide it on the grounds that it isn’t necessary – let it percolate out, and maybe the case will settle, or the
We conclude our series by reviewing the data for criminal, quasi-criminal and juvenile justice cases between the years 2010 and 2020. Once again, Los Angeles led, accounting for 142 cases. Riverside County was next, followed by San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Sacramento and Alameda counties. San Francisco, which was among the leaders in
This week, we’re concluding our three-week multi-part post on the originating jurisdictions for the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal cases between 1990 and 2020. In this post, we’re finishing the civil side of the docket, reviewing the years 2010 to 2020.
As usual, we omit the leading jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, from the Table
Between 2000 and 2009, the California Supreme Court decided 617 criminal, quasi-criminal and juvenile justice cases. Los Angeles County accounted for 188 of those cases. Orange County was second, followed by San Diego, Santa Clara, Alameda, Riverside and Sacramento counties.
Twenty additional jurisdictions which produced more than one case apiece during these years are reported
Today, we’re reporting the originating jurisdictions for the Supreme Court between the years 2000 and 2009. We omit Los Angeles County from the Table to make it more easily readable. Los Angeles County accounted for 147 civil cases between 2000 and 2009.
San Francisco County was twelfth in population but second in criminal cases. Next
In Table 1496, we report the jurisdictions where the Court’s criminal cases originated between 1990 and 1999. Los Angeles County accounted for 111 cases. The State Bar Court was next, followed by Orange County, the third most populous county in the state. Santa Clara County, the sixth most populous county, was next followed by San
This week, we’re reviewing the jurisdictions in which the Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets originated for the years 1990 through 1999. As we said earlier on the Illinois Supreme Court Review, this is important for the same reason that tracking which Districts and Divisions of the Court of Appeal the Court is taking its
Today, we’re reviewing the contents of our database, which includes every case decided by the California Supreme Court since January 8, 1990. For every case, we’ve captured the following data points:
CIVIL CASES:
Official Reporter Citation
California Reporter Citation
Docket Number
Case Name
Petitioner
Petitioner Governmental Entity (Y/N)
Respondent Governmental Entity (Y/N)
Source of Appellate
Last time, 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
Our latest repost:
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