Last time, we reviewed the Court’s civil cases, asking whether divided decisions from the Court of Appeal were more likely to be reversed in whole or in part than unanimous ones. This time, we’re turning our attention to the criminal cases and finding a very different result.
In only four of the past thirty-one years
Two weeks ago, we addressed the question of how common cases with a dissent at the Court of Appeal were on the Supreme Court’s docket. Our analysis illuminated the issue of whether it’s true that there’s no point in pursuing a petition for review from a unanimous Court of Appeal decision.
This week, we’re digging
Yesterday, we looked at the year-by-year data on the civil side, asking whether the presence of a dissent at the Court of Appeal level is reliably correlated with one or more dissenters at the Supreme Court level. Today, we’re turning our attention to the criminal side of the docket.
In Table 418, we compare the
Last time, we tested the often-heard view that a case which didn’t have a dissenter at the Court of Appeal has no chance of getting Supreme Court review. This week, we’re testing a different correlation for dissent below – does it help predict dissent at the Supreme Court? One would think the answer might be
In our last post, we reviewed the accuracy of the often-heard suggestion that the Supreme Court only hears cases which drew a dissent at the Court of Appeal. We discovered that with only a few exceptions, in the typical year only ten to twenty percent of the Court’s civil cases involved a dissent at the