This week the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office picked up 10 points for a brief, oral argument, and favorable outcome in State v. Tavodess Matthews, enabling them to pad their lead early in the second half of the season.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.

Given that Fond du Lac County v. S.N.W. was dismissed as improvidently granted, none of the teams gained points from last week’s decisions—hence no change in the standings.

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, 1959, and August 31, 1960.  The total of 250 decisions does not include rulings arising from (1) disciplinary matters involving lawyers, and (2) various petitions, motions, applications and the like (generally disposed of without oral argument and in short per curiam decisions).  Also omitted are two deadlocked (3-3) per curiam decisions (Mahringer v. Knoeller and Barker v. Retail Credit Co.).

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
Average Time Between Oral Argument and Opinions Authored by Each Justice

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

This week’s decision in Country Visions Cooperative v. Archer-Daniels-Midland Company rewarded the Waivers with five points for a brief and oral argument by Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren.  Reinhart’s performance propelled the Waivers all the way from fourth place into second, one point clear of the Affirmed.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.

This week’s lone decision did not provide any points for fantasy-league teams–hence, no change in the standings.

So remarked an eminent appellate attorney recently, and such has indeed been the case to date in the most contentious supreme court decisions of the 2020-21 term.  This is glaringly obvious in Table 1, which shows how regularly each justice has voted with the majority in the seven 4-3 decisions filed as of April 13, 2021.  Justice Hagedorn’s vote has been essential in every one of these decisions—and in this regard no other justice is close.[Continue Reading…]

This week’s sole decision bestowed points on three teams.  The Writs—with five points from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s brief and oral argument in Timothy Zignego v. Wisconsin Elections Commission—still find themselves in last place, but now with a more respectable score.  Higher up the standings, the Affirmed tightened their grip a bit on second place with two points from a pair of amicus briefs by Stafford Rosenbaum and Foley & Lardner.

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A post toward the end of 2018 studied the attorneys who had delivered oral arguments at the supreme court over the past ten terms (2008-09 through 2017-18).  Today, we’ll update these findings with a supplement devoted to the 2018-19 and 2019-20 terms—a period during which 177 lawyers presented one or more oral arguments.^[1]  Six of these advocates, shown in the following chart, appeared four times before the justices, while a total of 12 appeared at least three times, and 36 at least twice.

As one would expect, attorneys from the Department of Justice participated in more oral arguments than did their colleagues from other agencies or private firms.  Of the 231 oral arguments delivered by the 177 attorneys noted above, 54 of these arguments (23%) were presented by advocates from the Department of Justice (45 arguments from the Attorney General’s Office and 9 from the Solicitor General’s Office).  If we limit our focus to just the most active attorneys—those responsible for at least two oral arguments—the Department of Justice’s prominence is more striking still.  Government and private lawyers in this category accounted for 90 oral arguments, and 41% (37/90) of these arguments came from the DOJ’s attorneys (Table 1).^[2][Continue Reading…]

Three teams gained points from this week’s decisions, with the Waivers making the biggest move, thanks to five points from von Briesen & Roper for a brief and oral argument in Christus Lutheran Church of Appleton v. Wisconsin Department of Transportation.  The Affirmed picked up a single point in the same case for an amicus brief by Axley Brynelson, which nudged them into second place, one point ahead of the Citations and two points clear of the Waivers.  Although the Writs remain in the cellar, they did add two points to their total by means of an amicus brief and oral argument from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty in Jere Fabick v. Tony Evers.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.