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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
C.A.A.F. & CONSENSUS 2005: PRELIMINARY STATS
At the end of the most recent Supreme Court term, some "blawgs" (law blogs) had some interesting statistical analyses of the Court's decisions. (See e.g. Tom Goldstein's Supreme Court blog here and here).
C.A.A.F. already publishes some nifty statistics in their Annual Reports (e.g. 2004 term). But, no one wants to wait until the report is released for this term. I have done some preliminary data collection on the 2005 term. It is preliminary because (1) I may have missed something; (2) I only looked at the authors of the Majority and separate opinions, and (3) the term isn't over until the end of September; we may see additional opinions released. With all those caveats, here's what I have discovered:
I count 48 opinions released thus far. Of those, at least 23 were unanimous.[*] Judge Crawford authored 14 separate opinions (29% of the cases). That is roughly equal to the total number of separate opinions written by the other judges combined (15). Judge Erdmann took second place (5), followed by Judge Baker (4). Chief Judge Gierke and Judge Effron each wrote three (3).
Who is the "consensus-builder"?
Judge Baker wrote 8 opinions for the court. 5 of those drew separate opinions (62.5%).
Judge Crawford wrote 10 opinions for the court. 6 of those drew separate opinions (60%). Combined with the separate opinions she wrote, that means she was writing separately or someone was writing separately from her 42% of the time (20 cases).
Judge Erdmann wrote 12 opinions for the court. Judge Crawford wrote separate opinions in 7 of those cases (58%).
Judge Effron wrote 12 opionions, and 6 drew separate opinions (50%).
Chief Judge Gierke wrote 5 opinions, with only 1 dissent (20%).
That's all the mind-numbing data for tonight. I hope to update this soon after the term officially ends and relate these stats to the results (i.e., findings / sentence affirmed / reversed; CCA affirmed / reversed).
[FN *][Warning: boring and technical jurisprudential stuff in this paragraph. Feel free to skip it.] Sometimes, a judge joins the majority opinion, but writes separately to clarify an additional point. Other times, a judge concurs in the "judgment" or "result" (i.e., the C.C.A. is affirmed or reversed) but does not agree with the reasoning employed by the court. In the first draft of my spreadsheet, these are both called "concur," and they were not included in the total of unanimous cases. The first category of opinions are still unanimous, while the second arguably are not. I should be able to clarify this distinction in the data soon enough, and give a more accurate account of consensus on the court. Then there is the third category, concur-in-part and dissent-in-part. Technically, I think this category only includes cases where the judge agrees with part of the judgment or part of the result. So, if the court reverses the findings and vacates the sentence, and Judge X agrees that the sentence should be vacated but would affirm the findings, then Judge X concurs-in-part and dissents-in-part. But if Judge X just disagrees with part of the reasoning (e.g. "I think the petitioner's constitutional claim is bogus, but I agree with the court that his statutory claim requires reversal") then that is just a separate concurrence.
C.A.A.F. already publishes some nifty statistics in their Annual Reports (e.g. 2004 term). But, no one wants to wait until the report is released for this term. I have done some preliminary data collection on the 2005 term. It is preliminary because (1) I may have missed something; (2) I only looked at the authors of the Majority and separate opinions, and (3) the term isn't over until the end of September; we may see additional opinions released. With all those caveats, here's what I have discovered:
I count 48 opinions released thus far. Of those, at least 23 were unanimous.[*] Judge Crawford authored 14 separate opinions (29% of the cases). That is roughly equal to the total number of separate opinions written by the other judges combined (15). Judge Erdmann took second place (5), followed by Judge Baker (4). Chief Judge Gierke and Judge Effron each wrote three (3).
Who is the "consensus-builder"?
Judge Baker wrote 8 opinions for the court. 5 of those drew separate opinions (62.5%).
Judge Crawford wrote 10 opinions for the court. 6 of those drew separate opinions (60%). Combined with the separate opinions she wrote, that means she was writing separately or someone was writing separately from her 42% of the time (20 cases).
Judge Erdmann wrote 12 opinions for the court. Judge Crawford wrote separate opinions in 7 of those cases (58%).
Judge Effron wrote 12 opionions, and 6 drew separate opinions (50%).
Chief Judge Gierke wrote 5 opinions, with only 1 dissent (20%).
That's all the mind-numbing data for tonight. I hope to update this soon after the term officially ends and relate these stats to the results (i.e., findings / sentence affirmed / reversed; CCA affirmed / reversed).
[FN *][Warning: boring and technical jurisprudential stuff in this paragraph. Feel free to skip it.] Sometimes, a judge joins the majority opinion, but writes separately to clarify an additional point. Other times, a judge concurs in the "judgment" or "result" (i.e., the C.C.A. is affirmed or reversed) but does not agree with the reasoning employed by the court. In the first draft of my spreadsheet, these are both called "concur," and they were not included in the total of unanimous cases. The first category of opinions are still unanimous, while the second arguably are not. I should be able to clarify this distinction in the data soon enough, and give a more accurate account of consensus on the court. Then there is the third category, concur-in-part and dissent-in-part. Technically, I think this category only includes cases where the judge agrees with part of the judgment or part of the result. So, if the court reverses the findings and vacates the sentence, and Judge X agrees that the sentence should be vacated but would affirm the findings, then Judge X concurs-in-part and dissents-in-part. But if Judge X just disagrees with part of the reasoning (e.g. "I think the petitioner's constitutional claim is bogus, but I agree with the court that his statutory claim requires reversal") then that is just a separate concurrence.
