We’ve been reviewing the data for the average length of majority opinions during the 1990s and comparing it for correlations to the unanimity rate. In this post, we’re looking at the criminal docket. It turns out that the 1990s were a difficult time for this metric, given that the average length of majority opinions didn’t
A few posts ago, I noted that analytics research has demonstrated a correlation between the length of majority opinions and the rate of unanimous opinions – shorter opinions, more unanimity; longer opinions and less unanimity. So what happened for civil cases between 1990 and 1999?
As we noted a few posts ago, majority opinions were
Today, we’re reviewing the Supreme Court’s criminal docket during the 1990s – were total caseloads declining and was the Court writing longer opinions?
For the decade, the Court decided 523 criminal cases. The Court filed 17,588 pages of majority opinion, and average of 33.63 pages per case – half again longer than the average civil
This week, we begin our look at the impact of declining Court of Appeal caseloads on the work of the Supreme Court.
We’ll be reviewing three questions in order to analyze the impact of the slow decline in cases at the Court of Appeal: (1) did the Supreme Court’s caseload decline? (2) Was the Supreme
Last time, we reviewed the distribution of majority opinions in criminal cases among the Justices from 1990 to 2018. This time, we’re looking at the length of the Justices’ opinions – who wrote the longest and shortest majority opinions? Of course, the data here is strongly affected the Court’s death penalty opinions, where majority opinions
For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the distribution among the Justices of the Court’s majority opinions in civil cases and identifying which Justice each year wrote the longest and shortest opinions. Today, we’re looking at the data for the criminal docket.
In Table 753, we review the distribution of majority opinions between
Last time, we began our examination of the individual Justices’ writing habits with a review of how the majority opinions in civil cases were distributed from 1990 to 2018. Today, we’re looking at the average length of those opinions, Justice by Justice.
The real lesson we see in Table 749 is that although there are
For the past few weeks, we’ve been studying the average length of the Court’s opinions, looking for insights about the Court’s decision-making. This week, we’re starting a related topic: which individual Justice tends to write the longest and shortest majority opinions in civil cases? Today, step one – we trace how many majority opinions each
We’ve established already that majority opinions in cases reversing the Court of Appeal are, on average, generally longer than majority opinions affirming. Last time, we showed that for criminal cases between 1990 and 2003, the result was flipped – affirmances were nearly always longer. Today, we’re reviewing the data for the years 2004 to 2018.
Last time, we asked whether majority opinions in civil cases, on average, tend to be longer when the Court reverses than when it affirms. The answer was, in the vast majority of cases, yes. Today and tomorrow, we’re asking the same question in criminal cases. Surprisingly, the answer for criminal cases is the reverse –