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

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 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.