No decisions were filed this week–hence, no change in the standings.

The court’s first decision of the 2025-26 term (State v. Michael Joseph Gasper) delivered one point to the Affirmed via an amicus brief by Meissner Tierney Fisher & Nichols.  Click here for the updated standings.

Richard Posner has suggested that one way to perceive the stature or influence of justices is to measure the frequency with which law reviews cite them.^[1]  This approach highlighted the remarkable sway of Shirley Abrahamson as her career drew to a close—and in 2023 it generated an update comparing the number of references for each of her former colleagues still on the bench.  With the passage of three more years and the arrival of new justices, the time has come for another look at how often current members of the court have surfaced in the nation’s law reviews.[Continue Reading…]

These tables are derived from information contained in 199 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1918, and August 31, 1919.  The total of 199 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, and disciplinary matters involving lawyers and judges.

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

The Competition Committee’s winter meeting focused almost exclusively on the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office.  For years the league’s dominant team, the Gavels may no longer be viable in light of the tiny number of criminal cases accepted by the court in recent terms.  The Gavels finished the 2024-25 season in last place and will be hard-pressed to avoid relegation unless the court files an unusually large volume of decisions in the months to come.

As in past seasons, scoring summaries will be posted here later this month, with weekly updates following until the season concludes in July.  Meanwhile, click on the corresponding links to view the scoring rules and the full team rosters of competing law firms.

These tables are derived from information contained in 266 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1919, and August 31, 1920.  The total of 266 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, and disciplinary matters involving lawyers and judges.[Continue Reading…]

The passage of three years since the last update prompts our return to the question of how frequently women have been delivering oral arguments—as representatives of the Department of Justice, the Public Defender, private firms, and all categories combined.  While the tiny number of decisions filed in recent years has yielded a correspondingly small volume of oral arguments, we can compensate by comparing data for three-term clusters to obtain reasonable sample sizes. [Continue Reading…]

These tables are derived from information contained in 250 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1920, and August 31, 1921.  The total of 250 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, and disciplinary matters involving lawyers and judges.[Continue Reading…]

Although numerous commentators have characterized the Wisconsin Supreme Court as polarized, this conclusion often seemed based on nothing more precise than acrimonious exchanges between justices or the number of 4-3 decisions filed that term.  Furthermore, “indicators” of polarization cited by observers are not weighed against the impressions left by the court in preceding decades—which makes it impossible to determine whether the court is any more polarized now than in, say, 2010 or 1970.  Today’s post addresses this by offering a means of measuring polarized voting and comparing the results over the last hundred years.[Continue Reading…]

At a time when the Wisconsin Supreme Court has been described as polarized, dysfunctional, and politicized,^[1] some commentators have noted that fully 36% of decisions were unanimous in 2024-25—consistent with levels in previous terms and a larger share, they suggest, than might have been expected in a partisan atmosphere.  Indeed, given that more decisions last term were reached unanimously than by any of the other possible vote margins, such observations on unanimity could even prompt one to question whether “polarized,” “dysfunctional,” and “politicized” are les mots juste when characterizing the court. [Continue Reading…]