These tables are derived from information contained in 385 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1928, and August 31, 1929. The total of 385 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, and disciplinary matters involving lawyers and judges.
Cases are omitted if they were decided during the previous term but appeared in the search results because motions for reconsideration were not rejected until 1928-29. Such cases will be included in the tables for 1927-28.
Also excluded are four deadlocked (3-3) per curiam decisions: In re Relocation of County Highway J, Gooder v. State, In re Will of Ott, and State ex rel. Dammann v. Ballard.
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. For instance: (1) Chicago & Northwestern R. Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Comm. (226 N.W. 293) and Byram v. Wisconsin Tax Comm. (226 N.W. 296); (2) Moen v. Madison Railways Co. (225 N.W. 822) and Moen v. Madison R. Co. (225 N.W. 822); (3) Plankinton Packing Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Commission (224 N.W. 121), Swift & Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Commission (224 N.W. 124), Northern Reduction Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Commission (224 N.W. 124), and Milwaukee Stock Yards Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Commission (224 N.W. 124); (4) Nash Sales, Inc. v. Milwaukee (224 N.W. 126) and Sentinel Co. v. Milwaukee (224 N.W. 130); (5) State ex rel. Danielsen v. Washbush (223 N.W. 573) and State ex rel. Muenter v. Washbush (223 N.W. 575); (6) Scott v. State (223 N.W. 450) and Scott v. State (223 N.W. 452).
The court experienced substantial turnover during the 1928-29 term. Justice Aad Vinje died on March 23, 1929, and was succeeded by Justice Chester Fowler on April 23, 1929. Justice Christian Doerfler resigned because of poor health on May 30, 1929, and was succeeded on June 3, 1929, by Justice Oscar Fritz. There is no indication in the decisions that Justice Vinje participated in any of them—neither as the author of a majority or separate opinion, nor as someone joining a separate opinion written by a colleague. Moreover, creative and diligent research by Heidi Yelk of the Wisconsin State Law Library turned up evidence that Justice Vinje’s health had deteriorated gravely even before the term began. For these reasons I’m supposing that he did not vote in decisions filed during the 1928-29 term, and he does not appear in any of the following tables.
This still leaves the tables with eight justices, three of whom (Doerfler, Fritz and Fowler) served for only portions of the 1928-29 term. Internal evidence permits a fairly accurate sense as to when they began, or ceased, participating in cases, but in some instances I had to guess whether a decision was, say, 6-0 or 7-0.
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
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