Today we begin a new series, looking at the geographic origins of the Supreme Court’s civil docket from the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Districts of the Appellate Court. (If you’re wondering why we’re not addressing the First District, there’s only one county in the District, so it would make for a short post.)
Of course, there’s no particularly compelling reason why the Court’s civil cases from a particular District should be spread out geographically in a way comparable to the population. Nevertheless, we begin by noting the population of the Second District according to the 2000 census. DuPage County was the biggest in the District with 32.78% of the total population (of the District, not the state). Lake County had another 23.36% of the population, Kane was at 14.65% and Winnebago had 10.1%. McHenry had 9.43% of the population, and the rest of the counties were quite small.
Turning to the case numbers, DuPage was the only county which had civil cases on the Supreme Court’s docket every year of the nineties. Lake was close behind, being zeroed out only in 1993. The Court decided 31 civil cases which originated in DuPage County and twenty from Lake County. Kane was next, but accounted for only eight cases. McHenry and Winnebago had five cases, DeKalb and Ogle counties had two each, and Boone, Stephenson and Lee only produced one case apiece.
Join us back here next time as we review the numbers for the Third District.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Michael (no changes).