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Last week, we asked how often the California Supreme Court reviews unpublished decisions on both the civil and criminal dockets.  Today, we move to two new questions: how often are the Court’s decisions unanimous, and how often is the Court closely divided?

In Table 88, we report the share of the Court’s civil decisions which were unanimous and lopsided (which we define as cases involving zero or one dissenter).  The Court began the period with a quite low unanimity rate, agreeing on only 24 civil cases, or 48.98% of its civil docket in 2000.  The unanimity rate increased for each of the following five years, to 56.25% in 2001, 60.42% in 2002, 61.36% in 2003, 63.46% in 2004 and 78% in 2005.  Unanimity dropped slightly in 2006 to 73.58% – although the Court handed down thirty-nine unanimous civil decisions in both 2005 and 2006 – and more sharply in 2007 to 60%.

In 2000, the Court decided 14 civil cases with either two or three dissenters, for a “lopsided rate” of 71.43%.  The following year, the Court decided one more closely divided case, and accordingly, the lopsided rate dropped slightly, to 68.75%.  In 2002, division was down as the Court decided only nine cases with two or three dissenters.  As a result, the lopsided rate was 81.25%.  The following year, division was up slightly, and the rate dropped to 72.73%.  The lopsided rate rose to 78.85% in 2004.  In 2005, the Court had only seven closely divided civil decisions, and accordingly, the lopsided rate was 86%.  The next year, with a slightly increased caseload and the same number of closely divided cases, the lopsided rate increased just a bit to 86.79%.  Finally, in 2007, the Court decided sixteen closely divided civil cases, and the lopsided rate dropped to 70.91%.

Table 88

Join us back here tomorrow as we review the data for the criminal docket between 2000 and 2007.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Matt Biddulph (no changes).

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Yesterday, we began our analysis of a new question: how much of the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets arises from unpublished Court of Appeal decisions?  Today, we turn our attention to the Court’s criminal docket (omitting the automatic death penalty appeals).

Unpublished decisions are significantly more common on the criminal docket than they have been on the civil docket.  For the entire sixteen years, 52.13% of non-unanimous criminal decisions arose from unpublished decisions of the Court of Appeal.  The unpublished share of unanimous decisions was even greater – 60.16%.

As our period of study begins in 2000, 35.29% of the Court’s non-unanimous criminal decisions arose from unpublished decisions below, while 55.26% of the unanimous ones did.  In 2001 and 2003-2005, the share of unanimous decisions which arose from unpublished Court of Appeal decisions was over sixty every year – 62.5, 62.79, 66.07 and 63.41.  For the years 2003-2005, the share of unpubs among non-unanimous decisions was around fifteen points lower each year – 47.37% in 2003, 37.5% in 2004 and 47.37% the following year.

In 2006, unpubs among unanimous criminal decisions reached their highest level of the entire period, accounting for 70.97% of the Court’s decisions.  That same year, 54.55% of the non-unanimous criminal decisions were unpublished below.  The share among unanimous decisions dropped about fifteen points for the two years that followed, but in 2008, three-quarters of the non-unanimous criminal decisions were unpubs.  In 2011, the unpublished share of both sides of the criminal docket topped 70% – 71.43% for non-unanimous decisions, 70.27% for unanimous ones.  The share for unanimous decisions settled back into the high 50s and low 60s for the next few years, but in 2013, two-thirds of the Court’s non-unanimous criminal decisions came from unpublished Court of Appeal decisions.  The following year, the share among non-unanimous decisions reached its highest level of the period – 77.78% arose from unpublished Court of Appeal decisions.  For 2015, the share among unanimous decisions was only slightly down at 54.54%, but the share among non-unanimous decisions fell sharply, down to 45.45%.

Table 87

Join us back here next Thursday as we turn to another topic – how much of the Court’s civil, criminal and death penalty decisions are unanimous?

Image courtesy of Flickr by Joe Wolf (no changes).

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Last week, we analyzed the conventional wisdom that the California Supreme Court doesn’t review unanimous decisions from the Court of Appeal.  This week, we review a related question.  The conventional wisdom is that the Court doesn’t review unpublished decisions – but is it true?

We report the data for civil cases in Table 86 below, divided between non-unanimous and unanimous decisions.  We see that in fact, it is not at all uncommon for the Court to review unpublished decisions.  Between 2000 and 2013, unpublished Court of Appeal decisions never amounted to less than 11% of the Court’s docket, and they were generally significantly more.  In 2000, 44% of the Court’s non-unanimous decisions arose from unpublished decisions below to 29.17% of the unanimous decisions.  The share fell significantly among non-unanimous decisions the next year to 23.81%, but it jumped eight points on the unanimous side – 37.04%.  In 2002, only 20.69% of unanimously decided cases arose from unpublished decisions, but the fraction on non-unanimous cases was back up again, to 42.11%.  By 2004, fully 52.63% of the non-unanimous civil decisions arose from unpublished Court of Appeal decisions, and just short of a quarter of the unanimous decisions (24.24%) did.

The numbers dipped somewhat between 2006 and 2009, with 14.29%, 27.27%, 11.11% and 28.57% of the non-unanimous decisions arising from unpubs, and 27.5%, 18.18%, 12.9% and 18.92% of the unanimous decisions being unpublished below.  But in 2010, exactly one-third of the Court’s non-unanimous civil decisions were unpublished below, and 27.27% of the Court’s unanimous decisions were.  The numbers were almost identical in 2011, and the share of non-unanimous decisions spiked in 2013 – 57.14% of the Court’s non-unanimous civil decisions arose from unpublished cases, while 24% of the unanimous ones did.  The following year, the unpublished share of non-unanimous cases dropped to zero (the share of unanimous decisions remained flat at 25%).  Last year, unpublished decisions rebounded to about one-quarter of the Court’s non-unanimous decisions.  Among the unanimous decisions, 10.71% were unpublished below.

Table 86

Join us back here tomorrow as we review the share of unpublished Court of Appeal decisions on the California Supreme Court’s criminal docket.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Naotake Murayama (no changes).

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Yesterday, we analyzed whether there is a consistent, predictable relationship between dissent at the Court of Appeal and the result in civil cases at the California Supreme Court. Today, we turn our attention to the criminal docket.

The data is reported in Table 85 below. Interestingly, although the notion that a dissent at the Court of Appeal is crucial to getting review once again turns out to be wrong, there is a somewhat more stable relationship between the non-unanimous and unanimous decisions in terms of dissents below. Dissents were more than three times more common among non-unanimous criminal decisions in 2000 than they were among unanimous ones; 35.71% of non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below, but only 11.54% of unanimous ones did. The following year, the relationship between the two halves of the docket flipped, but in 2002, the numbers were quite similar: one-third of non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below, 14.29% of unanimous ones did. Dissents increased as a fraction of unanimous decisions in 2004, as 30.77% of non-unanimous decisions had dissenters below to 24.32% of unanimous decisions. In 2005, one-quarter of non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below, but none of the unanimous decisions did. The following year, non-unanimous decisions were down to 15.79% with a dissent below, and only 6.67% of unanimous decisions had a dissent.

In 2008 and 2009, dissents below were far more common in non-unanimous decisions than among the unanimous ones. In 2008, 60% of all non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below, to only 20% among the unanimous decisions. In 2009, one-third of all non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below, but only 3.57% of unanimous ones did.

For the rest of the period, the relationship between dissents in the Court’s criminal docket was less stable. In 2010, 8.33% of non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below to 13.51% of unanimous decisions. The following year, the figures were 42.86% and 22.22%. In 2012, the halves of the docket switched sides again – 7.14% of the Court’s non-unanimous criminal decisions had a dissent below to 15.79% of the unanimous ones.

In the past three years, dissents below have been concentrated among the Court’s unanimous decisions. In 2013, 23.08% of unanimous decisions had a dissent below. The next year, 14.81% did. In each of those years, none of the non-unanimous decisions had a dissent below. Most recently, in 2015, none of the Court’s decisions, either on the non-unanimous or unanimous side, had a dissent below.

Table 85

Join us back here next Thursday as we turn to a new subject in our ongoing analysis.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Marc Cooper (no changes).

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This week, we’re looking at a new topic in our continuing analysis of the California Supreme Court’s decision making since 2000: how high a fraction of the Court’s civil docket involved a dissent at the Court of Appeal, and what predictive value does a dissent at the Court of Appeal have for the result at the Supreme Court? The conventional wisdom is that a dissent at the Court of Appeal is an essential prerequisite of getting Supreme Court review. Additionally, one might expect that more non-unanimous decisions than unanimous ones at the Supreme Court would involve a dissent below, since presumably disagreement at the intermediate level would suggest a likelihood of dissent at the Supreme Court.

We report the data for the civil docket in Table 84 below. The data reflects that unanimity at the Court of Appeal is far from a disqualifier for getting Supreme Court review; nor is there a consistent relationship between non-unanimous and unanimous decisions as to dissent below. In 2000, 24% of non-unanimous decisions had dissents below to only 12.5% for unanimous decisions. The following year, dissent was fairly flat among non-unanimous decisions at 23.81%, but only 3.7% of the unanimous decisions involved a dissent below. But between 2002 and 2005, dissent below was fairly uncommon in the Court’s cases. In 2002, only 3.44% of the Court’s unanimous decisions involved a dissent, and none of the non-unanimous decisions did. The following year, 11.76% of the non-unanimous decisions involved a dissent below, while none of the non-unanimous decisions did. In 2005, 10.26% of non-unanimous decisions involved a dissent below, but none of the unanimous decisions did.

Dissent below became relatively common among the Court’s non-unanimous decisions between 2006 and 2012 (with the exception of 2009). In 2006, 35.71% of the Court’s non-unanimous decisions involved a dissent below. Just slightly more than twenty percent of the Court’s non-unanimous decisions involved a dissent below in 2007, 2008 and 2010. During the following two years, dissent below reached its highest level among the Court’s non-unanimous decisions – 37.5% in 2011 and 42.86% in 2012.

Dissent below didn’t stay at any consistent level among the Court’s unanimous decisions for the years 2006 through 2012. Only 7.69% of the cases involved dissents below in 2006. Dissents bounced around as a fraction of the unanimous decisions between 2007 and 2012: 12.12%, 22.58%, 10.81%, 3.03%, 24% and 15.79%, respectively.

The chart reflects that dissents below have been sharply down as a percentage of both sides of the civil docket in the past three years. None of the Court’s non-unanimous civil decisions involved a dissent below in 2013 or 2015. In 2014, only 14.29% of the non-unanimous decisions did. Dissents below were equally insignificant as a fraction of the unanimous decisions – 8% in 2013, 13.33% in 2014 and only 3.57% last year.

Table 84

Join us back here tomorrow as we look at the importance of dissent at the Court of Appeal in the Court’s criminal docket.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Prayitno (no changes).

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Today, we conclude our analysis of the areas of law comprising the California Supreme Court’s criminal docket.

In Table 82 below, we report the numbers of cases falling in each area of law from 2000 to 2015.  Automatic death penalty appeals accounted for 331 of the Court’s 969 criminal cases.  The Court decided 154 criminal procedure cases, and 122 cases in sentencing law.  The Court heard 104 cases in constitutional law.

Table 82

In Table 83, we report the same data, one area of law at a time, as a percentage of the criminal docket.  Automatic death penalty appeals accounted for 34.16% of the criminal caseload from 2000 to 2015.  Criminal procedure produced 15.89% of the cases, followed by sentencing law at 12.59% and constitutional law at 10.73%.  Violent crimes accounted for 6.81%, with habeas corpus cases at 5.26% and juvenile issues producing 4.75% of the cases.  Sex crimes produced 3.61% of the cases, property crimes were 2.37%, and attorney admission and disciplinary cases and drug crimes accounted for 1.44% each.  The rarest areas on the criminal docket were vehicle crimes (0.21%), conspiracy crimes (0.31%) and political crimes (0.41%).

Table 83

Join us back here next Wednesday as we turn our attention to a new area – how important are dissents at the Court of Appeal if you want to wind up on the Supreme Court’s docket?

Image courtesy of Flickr by Chris Hunkeler (no changes).

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For the past six weeks, we’ve been analyzing the year-by-year evolution of the areas of law covered by the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets.  I once read a quote from an appellate judge who commented that every jurisdiction completely restates its law every twenty years.  Since our data library covers nearly that long – sixteen years – let’s gather the data together for some overall conclusions.

In Table 80 below, we report the total number of cases in each area of law for the civil docket.  Of the 671 civil cases heard by the Court since 2000, 103 were tort law.  Government and administrative law was right behind at 99 cases, followed by 83 civil procedure cases, 78 employment law cases and 73 constitutional law cases.  After that, the number dropped sharply, as the next most common area is insurance law at 42 cases.

Table 80

In Table 81 below, we report the same data as a percentage of the civil docket.  Tort law amounted to 15.35% of the civil docket, followed by government and administrative law at 14.75%, civil procedure at 12.37%, employment law at 11.62% and constitutional law at 10.88%.  Insurance law accounted for 6.26% of the docket.  Arbitration law produced 4.77% of the cases, followed by domestic relations (3.28%), environmental law (3.28%), workers’ compensation and tax law (2.83% each), commercial law (2.53%), consumer law (2.24%) and contract law (2.09%).  The six least common issues on the civil docket were secured transactions and riparian law (0.15%), election law (0.45%), construction law (0.6%) and wills and estates and property law (1.79% each).

Table 81

Join us back here tomorrow as we gather together our analysis for the criminal docket.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Brewbooks (no changes).

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Today, we conclude our review of the areas of law which the California Supreme Court draws its civil and criminal dockets from with a look at the Court’s criminal docket over the past three years.

In 2013, automatic death penalty appeals accounted for 35.29% of the criminal docket.  As always, the next most frequent area produced less than half as many cases: criminal procedure at 15.69%.  Sentencing law accounted for 11.76% of the docket.  Sex crimes and drug offenses were next, each accounting for 7.84% of the cases.  Violent crimes produced 5.88% of the docket.  Constitutional law was way down, accounting for only 3.92% of the cases, as did conspiracy law.  Juvenile law, attorney admission and disciplinary cases, political crimes and judicial disqualification each produced one case, or 1.96% of the docket.

Table 77

In 2014, the Court decided twenty-four automatic death penalty appeals, for 44.44% of the criminal docket.  Only one other area – criminal procedure at 18.52% – accounted for more than ten percent of the criminal docket.  Sentencing law cases produced 9.26% of the docket.  Violent crimes were next, producing 7.41% of the cases.  Constitutional law, property crimes, sex crimes and habeas corpus cases were next, each producing 3.7% of the docket.  Finally, juvenile issues, attorney admission and disciplinary cases, and vehicle crimes, each accounted for one case, or 1.85% of the docket.

Table 78

For 2015, automatic death penalty appeals accounted for 38.64% of the caseload.  Sentencing law and criminal procedure were the only other areas of law accounting for more than ten percent of the docket at 25% and 18.18%, respectively.  Constitutional law produced 6.82% of the cases.  Five areas – violent crimes, juvenile offenses, attorney admission and disciplinary issues, sex crimes and habeas corpus cases – produced 2.27% of the cases each.

Table 79

Join us back here next Thursday as we turn to a new phase of our analysis – does a dissent at the Court of Appeal help in getting Supreme Court review?

Image courtesy of Flickr by Loco Steve (no changes).

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For the past several weeks, we’ve been reviewing the areas of law from which the California Supreme Court has drawn its civil and criminal docket in the years since 2000.  Today and tomorrow, we’ll address the criminal docket in the years 2010 through 2015.

In Table 74 below, we report the breakdown for the Supreme Court’s criminal docket in 2010.  Automatic death penalty appeals dominated the docket, as they always do; 32.43% of the Court’s criminal, juvenile and disciplinary docket consisted of death penalty appeals.  Sentencing cases accounted for 17.57% of the docket, and 16.22% were criminal procedure cases.  Constitutional law and habeas corpus cases accounted for 9.46% apiece of the docket.  Violent crimes, sex crimes and drug crimes accounted for 4.05% apiece.  Five areas of law – juvenile law, attorney admission and discipline, property crimes, political crimes and conspiracy crimes – produced one case each, or 1.35% of the docket.

Table 74

In 2011, automatic death penalty appeals were even more dominant, accounting for 45.61% of the docket.  No other area of law produced as much as ten percent of the caseload.  Four areas – criminal procedure, constitutional law, juvenile law and attorney admission and discipline – accounted for 8.77% of the docket each.  Sentencing law, violent crimes, sex crimes and habeas corpus cases produced 3.51% of the docket apiece.  Political crimes, fraud and financial crimes and drug crimes accounted for one case apiece – 1.75% of the caseload.

Table 75

The data for 2012 is reported below in Table 76.  Automatic death penalty appeals produced 30.49% of the docket.  Sentencing and constitutional law produced less than half as many cases, each accounting for 13.41% of the docket. Criminal procedure produced 10.98% of the caseload.  Four areas – violent crimes, juvenile issues, attorney admission and discipline and habeas corpus cases – produced 6.1% of the cases apiece.  Sex crimes accounted for 3.66% of the cases, followed by property crimes at 2.44% and drug crimes at 1.22%.

Table 76

Join us back here tomorrow as we wrap up our analysis with a look at the criminal docket between 2013 and 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by John Morgan (no changes).

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Today, we wrap up our analysis of the areas of law which have comprised the California Supreme Court’s civil docket over the past sixteen years, focusing on the civil docket for the years 2013 through 2015.

Government and administrative law jumped to the top spot in the civil docket for 2013, accounting for 18.92% of the docket.  Civil procedure was up slightly, producing 13.51% of the caseload.  Employment law was down and consumer law was up, as each accounted for 8.11% of the docket in 2013. Seven different areas of law – constitutional, tort, arbitration, contract, tax law, property and secured transactions – produced 5.41% of the docket apiece.  Finally, the Court decided one case each in domestic relations, workers compensation, commercial law, tax and wills and estates.

Table 71

Tort law, traditionally quite high on all appellate dockets, was the most common area of law on the Court’s 2014 civil docket, accounting for 20.83% of the cases. Employment and civil procedure were next, producing 16.67% of the cases apiece.  Government and administrative law contributed 12.5% of the docket.  Tax law was up slightly at 8.33%, followed by constitutional law, domestic relations, insurance, arbitration, contract law and environmental law, each accounting for 4.17%.

Table 72

Government and administrative law dominated the civil docket last year, accounting for fully 40% of the cases, with all other areas of the law far behind.  Constitutional law, employment, insurance, workers compensation, commercial law, arbitration and contract law each accounted for 5.71% of the cases.  Civil procedure, domestic relations, tort, tax, wills and estates, property law and secured transactions accounted for 2.86% of the docket apiece.

Table 73

Join us back here next week as we complete our tour through the areas of law on the California Supreme Court’s docket by reviewing the criminal docket between 2010 and 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Chris Hunkeler (no changes).