This week, we’re taking a closer look at what kinds of cases wind up in the Court’s constitutional law docket, and whether the Court is more or less likely to reverse depending on who won below. Today, we’re reviewing the numbers for the criminal docket. View Full Post What Kind of Constitutional Law Case is the Court Most Likely to Hear in the Criminal Docket?
This week, we’re taking a closer look at what kinds of cases wind up in the Court’s constitutional law docket, and whether the Court is more or less likely to reverse depending on who won below. Today, we’re reviewing the numbers for the criminal docket. View Full Post 
Last week, we tracked the Court’s yearly caseload in constitutional law on both the civil and criminal dockets. This week, we’re digging deeper to answer three questions: (1) does the Court tend to take more conservative or liberal decisions from the Court of Appeal involving constitutional law issues; (2) is the Court more (or less) likely to reverse a conservative or liberal constitutional law decision; and (3) overall, how likely is the Court to reverse in a case involving constitutional law issues in comparison to the rest of the Court’s docket? 
This week, we’re continuing our review of the Court’s constitutional law docket by asking (1) how much of the Court’s docket consists of cases won below by one side or the other; (2) whether the Court has a significantly higher (or lower) reversal rate depending on who won below; and (3) whether the Court tends to reverse more or less often in constitutional law cases than it does in other cases. 
Last week, we tracked the number of constitutional law cases on the civil side of the Court’s docket, year by year since 1990. This week, we’re looking deeper at the data. What kind of constitutional law cases has the Court tended to take, and has the Court tended to reverse more regularly, depending on who won the case below? 
Yesterday, we began a review of the Court’s constitutional law caseload on the civil side of the docket. Today, we begin our review of the Court’s criminal constitutional law cases.
The Court decided four criminal cases in 1992 which principally involved constitutional law issues. 
Earlier this week at the 
Yesterday, we began our detailed look at the most common area of law on the Court’s civil and criminal dockets (and the area of law most frequently identified with courts of law resort) – constitutional law. Today, we’re beginning our review of the Court’s constitutional law cases on the criminal docket side. 
This week, we’re beginning an intensive look at the Court’s cases, divided by subject matter. Many people – especially non-lawyers – think of courts of last resort primarily in terms of constitutional law decisions. So let’s start there – the Illinois Supreme Court’s past twenty-seven years with constitutional law in both civil and criminal law. 
For two years I planned to take a 6-week sabbatical in the summer of 2015 to thru hike the Colorado Trail. It didn’t work out.
I had hip problems that made hiking impossible from 2014-2016. It didn’t matter. My wife developed serious health problems that would have pulled me off the trail if I had been hiking in 2015.