Part 4 of Our Four-Part Post on the Academic Literature on Panel Effects

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Part 4 of Our Four-Part Post on the Academic Literature on Panel Effects

April 12, 2021

This time, we’re concluding our four-part post, both here and on the Illinois Supreme Court Review, discussing some of the academic literature on panel effects in appellate decision-making. Today, we’re looking at “Judging the Voting Rights Act,” 108 Columbia Law Rev. 1 (2008), by Professors Adam B. Cox and Thomas J. Miles. The authors began by collecting every published Federal decision decided pursuant to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act since 1982. The…

How Much Difference Does the Composition of Your Panel Make (Part 3 of a 4 Part Post)

April 11, 2021

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Earlier this week, we began a four-part post at the Illinois Supreme Court Review briefly reviewing some of the leading academic literature on the phenomenon of “panel effects” – the theory that appellate panels are a collective decision-maker rather than a group of individual decision-makers, and thus a particular judge’s vote is influenced to some degree by the characteristics of the other judges he or she is sitting with. Today, we’re looking at two more…

How Are Appellate Panels Selected (Part 2 of a 4 Part Post)

April 10, 2021

With this post, we begin our short review of some of the academic literature regarding panel effects. Of course, the first question one encounters when taking a case before an appellate court is how one’s panel will be chosen. A majority of appellate courts state, either in their operating procedures or their rules, that appellate panels for argued cases are assigned randomly. This assumption has been built into most of the analytics work done on…

A Short Review of The Scholarship on Panel Effects (Part 1 of 4 – Why It Matters)

April 8, 2021

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This week, we’re taking a short break from our usual number-heavy analysis for another glance at some of the vast academic literature on the analytic-driven analysis of appellate decision making. This is a four-part post – two here and two over at the California Supreme Court Review – sampling some of the literature on “panel effects.” Of course, virtually all appellate decision making takes place in panels of judges – sometimes three, occasionally five, frequently…

Where Do the California Supreme Court’s Criminal Cases Originate (2010-2020)?

April 3, 2021

We conclude our series by reviewing the data for criminal, quasi-criminal and juvenile justice cases between the years 2010 and 2020. Once again, Los Angeles led, accounting for 142 cases. Riverside County was next, followed by San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Sacramento and Alameda counties. San Francisco, which was among the leaders in civil cases, ranked sixteenth in criminal cases over the past eleven years. An additional sixteen jurisdictions produced between two and…

Where Do the California Supreme Court’s Civil Cases Originate (2010-2020)?

April 3, 2021

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This week, we’re concluding our three-week multi-part post on the originating jurisdictions for the California Supreme Court’s civil and criminal cases between 1990 and 2020. In this post, we’re finishing the civil side of the docket, reviewing the years 2010 to 2020. As usual, we omit the leading jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, from the Table for the sake of readability. Los Angeles produced 120 civil cases between 2010 and 2020. Next was Orange County, with…

Where Do the Illinois Supreme Court’s Criminal Cases Originate (2010-2020)?

April 3, 2021

This time, we’re concluding our three-week trip through the data for originating jurisdictions, looking at the Court’s criminal cases between 2010 and 2020. For these years, Cook County accounted for 156 criminal cases. Will County was next, followed by Peoria, Du Page, Kane and Lake counties. Several small counties made our second Table, producing between two and four criminal cases apiece. Interestingly, Madison and Sangamon counties, both of which tend to account for quite a…

Where Do the Illinois Supreme Court’s Civil Cases Originate (2010-2020)?

April 3, 2021

This week, we’re wrapping up our three-week series on the geographical origins of the Court’s docket by reviewing the data for the years 2010 through 2020. Between 2010 and 2020, the Court decided 150 civil cases which began in Cook County (once again, Cook is removed from the Table for readability). There was a three-way tie for second between Du Page, Lake and Sangamon County. Once again, Madison County was high on the list, as…

Where Do the Illinois Supreme Court’s Criminal Cases Originate (2000-2009)?

March 28, 2021

For the past several posts, we’ve been reviewing the jurisdictions where the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil and criminal cases originated. This time, we’re looking at the criminal cases for the years 2000 through 2009. Once again, we omit Cook County from the Table to make it easier to read. Cook County produced 225 criminal cases from 2000 to 2009. Second was Du Page County, followed by Kane and Champaign County, then Lake and Peoria County.…

Where Do the Illinois Supreme Court’s Civil Cases Originate (2000-2009)?