From 2010 to 2020, a dissenter at the Court of Appeal was a very strong indicator that reversal was likely in criminal cases at the Supreme Court. Overall, divided decisions were reversed at nearly double the rate of unanimous ones: 75.51% to 41.48%. Divided decisions were more likely to be reversed than unanimous ones in
For the past two weeks, we’ve been continuing our study of the dissent rate at the Court of Appeal by comparing the rate of dissent in the Supreme Court’s cases at the Court of Appeal to the reversal rate at the Supreme Court. To put it another way: is a dissent below an indication that
For the years 2000 through 2009, a dissent at the Court of Appeal was nearly as strong an indicator of likely reversal in criminal cases as it had been in the preceding decade. Between 2000 and 2009, 70.27% of cases with a dissent below were reversed, in whole or in part, at the Supreme Court.
Between 2000 and 2009, a dissent at the Court of Appeal was a moderately strong indication that a reversal was more likely at the Supreme Court in civil cases. For the ten year period, 68.33% of cases with a dissent below were reversed at the Supreme Court, while 56.1% of cases decided unanimously at the
Last time, we showed that for the years 1990 through 1999, a divided decision at the Court of Appeal was a moderate indicator that a reversal was more likely at the Supreme Court in a civil case. But on the criminal side, things are different – if there’s a dissent below, reversal is considerably more
For the next three weeks, we’ll be reviewing data closely related to our just-concluded look at dissents below and at the Supreme Court. This time, we’re asking a related question – is the Supreme Court more likely to reverse when there’s a dissent below? Or to put it another way – is there reason to
Just as we concluded last time for civil cases, dissent at the Supreme Court was almost always much more common than division at the Court of Appeal in the Court’s criminal cases. Between 2005 and 2020, the dissent rate was higher at the Court of Appeal in only three of 16 years: 2007, 2008 and
Last time, we determined that dissent was more common at the Supreme Court than at the Court of Appeal in every year between 1990 and 2004. The story is much the same for the years 2005 through 2020 – 2 years higher at the Court of Appeal (2011, 2018); 2 years tied (2008, 2019) ;
Last time, we reviewed the data for civil cases between 1990 and 2004, comparing the percentage of cases in which there was a dissent at the Court of Appeal to the percentage of civil cases in which there was dissent at the Supreme Court. This time, we’re looking at the data for criminal cases during
This week, we’re evaluating whether dissent at the Court of Appeal is an indicator of division at the Supreme Court. Today, we’re looking at the Court’s civil cases between 1990 and 2004.
As we can see from the Table below, there is no relation between the dissent rate at the Court of Appeal and the