Wisconsin Supreme Court Statistics, 1937-38

These tables are derived from information contained in 303 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1937, and August 31, 1938.  The total of 303 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, and the like.  In particular, cases are not included if they were decided during the previous term but appeared in the search results because motions for reconsideration were not rejected until 1937-38.  Also excluded are lawyer disciplinary rulings and Bender v. Bain, a deadlocked (3-3) per curiam decision.

When two or more cases were, in effect, consolidated—one was simply said to be ruled by the decision in the other—the cases are counted as only one: (1) Kalb v. Luce and Kalb v. Feuerstein; and (2) Liberty v. Liberty (226 Wis. 136) and Liberty v. Liberty (226 Wis. 141).

In Bechthold v. Wauwatosa the court filed its original decision on February 15, 1938.  After a motion for rehearing was granted, and the case was reargued, the court ruled on June 21, 1938, that its February 15 decision was in error and replaced its previous mandate with a new ruling.  Both decisions are included in our tables.  So, too, with State ex rel. Wisconsin Development Authority v. Dammann (January 11, 1938, and June 21, 1938). 

The tables are available as a complete set and by individual topic in the subsets listed below.

Four-to-Three Decisions
Decisions Arranged by Vote Split
Frequency of Justices in the Majority
Distribution of Opinion Authorship
Frequency of Agreement Between Pairs of Justices

About Alan Ball

Alan Ball is a Professor of History at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.

alan.ball@marquette.edu

SCOWstats offers numerical analysis of the voting by Wisconsin Supreme Court justices on diverse issues over the past 97 years.

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