One of the decisions filed this week (Milton Eugene Warren v. Michael Meisner) rewarded the league’s top two teams. Retaining their lead, the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office picked up two points for an amicus brief and an oral argument, while the second-place Waivers added a point from an amicus brief by Henak Law Office.

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The decisions filed this week enabled the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office to pad their lead by virtue of five points earned for a brief and oral argument in State v. Mose B. Coffee.

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The Supreme Court did not file any new decisions this week, and thus there are no changes in the standings.

These tables are derived from information contained in 274 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1967, and August 31, 1968.  The total of 274 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 is a code of judicial ethics promulgated per curiam on November 14, 1967.

Eight justices appear in several of the following tables, because Justice Robert Hansen replaced Justice George Currie at the beginning of 1968.

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

This week’s decision in Jose M. Correa v. Woodman’s Food Market distributed five points to the Waivers (for a brief and oral argument by Husch Blackwell) and one point to the Citations (for an amicus brief by Cannon & Dunphy). On the strength of this showing, the Waivers broke away from the Affirmed and gained sole possession of second place.

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Four of the league’s five teams collected points from this week’s decision in Wisconsin Legislature v. Andrea Palm—with the Waivers leading the way, thanks to eight points from Husch Blackwell (brief and favorable outcome) and one point each from Hawks Quindel and Boardman & Clark (amicus briefs). Next came the Writs, with amicus briefs from Legal Action of Wisconsin, Pines Bach, and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty earning the team its first three points of the season. Godfrey & Kahn and Stafford Rosenbaum also contributed to the barrage of amicus briefs, thereby delivering one point each to their teams—the Citations and the Affirmed, respectively.

When the dust settled, the Waivers had jumped into a second-place tie with the Affirmed, and they are poised to collect as many as 10 more points in a decision scheduled for release on Tuesday.

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With the arrival of spring, it becomes possible to estimate quite accurately the number of decisions that the justices will file by the time that they close the books on the current term at the end of July. The results have attracted more than casual interest over the past decade because of the historically small volume of cases during these years—an average of only 56 per term, and never more than 62. This compares to averages of 83, 78, and 110 for the three preceding decades, which are included in the following graph.^[1] [Continue Reading…]

The Supreme Court did not file any new decisions this week, and thus there are no changes in the standings.

The Supreme Court did not file any new decisions this week, and thus there are no changes in the standings.

Last month’s post on law-school representation rates at the Wisconsin Supreme Court prompted a question regarding women’s portions of the various findings in that piece. We can make some headway with this suggestion, because women accounted for 163 of the oral arguments given during the period—plenty for calculating meaningful percentages.^[1] [Continue Reading…]