These tables are derived from information contained in 379 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1927, and August 31, 1928. The total of 379 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 1927-28. Such cases will be included in the tables for 1926-27.
Also excluded are three deadlocked (3-3) per curiam decisions: Boehlke v. Wallschlaeger, Luebke v. Danaher, and Morse v. State.
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) State v. Ripley (220 N.W. 235) and State v. Barrett (220 N.W. 236); (2) Calvert v. City of Appleton (219 N.W. 102) and Calvert v. Appleton (219 N.W. 104); (3) Gahan v. Lymer (220 N.W. 532) and Gahan v. William F. Arndt Co. (220 N.W. 534); (4) State ex rel. Aetna Ins. Co. v. Fowler (220 N.W. 534) and State ex rel. Continental Ins. Co. v. Fowler (220 N.W. 538); (5) State v. Roach (218 N.W. 829) and State v. Saccari (218 N.W. 830); (6) Bischoff v. Hustisford State Bank (218 N.W. 353), Drachenberg v. Hustisford State Bank (218 N.W. 357), and Thurow v. Hustisford State Bank (218 N.W. 357); (7) Northwestern Mut. L. Ins. Co. v. State (195 Wis. 190) and Northwestern Mut. L. Ins. Co. v. State (195 Wis. 192); (8) State ex rel. Joint School Dist. v. Becker (215 N.W. 902) and State ex rel. School Dist. v. Kramer (217 N.W. 75); and (9) State v. Van Brocklin (217 N.W. 277) and State v. Farber (217 N.W. 282).
Justice Aad Vinje died on March 23, 1929, and was succeeded by Justice Chester Fowler on April 23, 1929. However, information turned up by Heidi Yelk of the Wisconsin State Law Library indicates that his health deteriorated well before this. For instance, according to the September 16, 1927, edition of The Daily Northwestern: “Justice M. B. Rosenberry, senior justice of the state supreme court is acting chief justice as the fall term of the court swings into its heaviest portion of business this week, in the absence of Chief Justice A. J. Vinje, who is in northern Wisconsin for his health. The chief justice, who recently returned from a trip to Europe, has been asked by his physicians to refrain from court work until about the first of the year and is expected to stay in the northern part of the state until then. Having served since 1910, Mr. Vinje has not been in perfect health for some time.”
According to the results returned by Nexis Uni, Justice Vinje did not write any opinions until December 1927 and contributed only a dozen more thereafter—the last coming in early April 1928. His sum of 15 majority opinions is dwarfed by the totals for other justices (often 50 or more), and it raises the question of how actively he participated, especially in the early and concluding months of the term. Although the following tables assume that he took part in all decisions except for three that list him as a non-participant, this may exaggerate his involvement in majorities—meaning, for example, that 7-0 outcomes might actually have been 6-0 decisions.
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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