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

With two terms completed since our last update, it’s time for another look at how the justices are handling Fourth-Amendment cases—more specifically, how many of these cases they are accepting; how sympathetically they are reacting to Fourth-Amendment arguments; and how they compare to their predecessors on the bench. [Continue Reading…]

This week’s decision delivered a point to the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office for an amicus brief in State v. Teresa L. Clark.

Click here for the updated standings.

As detailed below, this week’s decisions showered points on three of the league’s teams, moving all of them well above the fourth-place Gavels.  Click here for the updated standings.

The Writs: 15 points.
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, 10 points for a brief, oral argument, and favorable outcome in Billie Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Pines Bach, five points for a brief and oral argument in Billie Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The Waivers: 13 points.
Troutman Pepper, 10 points for a brief, oral argument, and favorable outcome in Billie Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Boardman & Clark, three points for a brief in Billie Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The Affirmed: 11 points.
Stafford Rosenbaum, five points for a brief and oral argument in Billie Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission and one point for an amicus brief in James Sewell v. Racine Unified School District Board of Canvassers.
O’Neil, Cannon, Hollman, DeJong & Laing, five points for a brief and oral argument in Nudo Holdings, LLC v. Board of Review for the City of Kenosha.

 

These tables are derived from information contained in 208 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that were turned up in a Nexis Uni search for decisions filed between September 1, 1949, and August 31, 1950.  The total of 208 decisions does not include various orders pertaining to petitions, motions, applications, and the like (generally disposed of without oral argument and in short per curiam decisions). 

One could argue that the order in Application of Alloway (granting a writ sought by the petitioner) should be included, because it bears some of the features of a regular decision.  However, the fact that the order appeared just one day after the hearing suffices to distinguish the case from those under consideration here.

In Wyman v. Utech the court found its original mandate (December 30, 1949, authored by Justice Rosenberry) to be erroneous and issued a new decision (May 2, 1950, authored by Justice Gehl).  Both decisions are counted here. 

Eight justices appear in a number of the tables because Justice Marvin Rosenberry retired in January 1950 and was replaced that month by Edward Gehl.

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.

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

As March is Women’s History Month, it seems an appropriate time to explore certain topics regarding female justices on America’s state supreme courts.  We’ll begin with information from the National Center for State Courts, which describes the landscape in the spring/summer of 2015, and then compare these findings with impressions derived from scrutiny of the courts in all 50 states seven years later.^[1]  See whether you are more struck by the similarities or the differences between the snapshots from these two points in time.

Spring/Summer of 2015
According to the 2015 data, 36% of state supreme court justices were women—122 of 335—and women accounted for a slightly larger share, 40%, of the 52 chief justices.^[2]  (Oklahoma and Texas each have two courts of last resort, one for criminal and one for civil cases.  Hence the total of 52 chief justices.)

As one might expect, women were not distributed evenly among the 52 courts.  Washington State had six female justices in 2015, for instance, and Maryland nearly matched that total with five—while neither Idaho nor Iowa had any.  Table 1 displays the state supreme courts with at least three female justices, and Table 2 lists the states whose courts had no more than one.

When determining which courts have the most female justices, it’s worth bearing in mind that the number of members on a court varies from state to state.  A few courts seat nine justices; others seven; and some five.  And, of course, a handful of spots will always be vacant at any given moment.  Consequently, the presence of female justices might better be measured by calculating their percentage of a court’s roster, which will reveal the states where they represent the majority.  Washington State still ranked high in 2015, as shown in Table 3, but because its court has nine members, its percentage of female justices slipped below that of Tennessee and Maryland.^[3]

March of 2022
Now let’s compare the figures from 2015 with analogous information compiled seven years later.  The percentage of female justices has increased—to 41% (138/340), up from 36% in 2015—but women’s share of chief justices dropped precipitously, from 40% in 2015 to 29% in 2022.

Washington State remained atop the list of courts with the largest number of female justices in 2022—presented below in Table 4—but none of the next six states in this table placed in the first six back in 2015 (Table 1).

Turning to the courts with the lowest numbers, we find that in both 2015 (Table 2) and 2022 (Table 5, below), there were 11 states with no more than one female justice.  However, scarcely any of the states in Table 2 match those in Table 5—as only Indiana and Mississippi appear in both.

Finally, let’s have a look in Table 6 at those states where women formed a majority of a court’s justices in 2022.  Here, we have a 44% increase over 2015, when only nine states made the list.  Moreover, the current total of 13 states may soon move to 14, when California fills a vacancy for which Governor Gavin Newsom has nominated a woman.

 

[1] The NCSC data is said to have been updated last in February 2016.  However, when I spot-checked the justices listed for the Wisconsin and Minnesota Supreme Courts, the lineups matched those of the justices on these two courts in the spring/summer of 2015 (and not during the 2015-16 term).

[2] I have omitted the District of Columbia.  Also, six of 341 seats were temporarily vacant, leaving the total of 335 justices noted here.

[3] At the time, Tennessee had a vacancy along with four justices, and Maryland had seven justices.

This week’s sole decision (State v. Daniel J. Van Linn) provided five points to the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office for a brief and oral argument.  This moved the Gavels one point ahead of the Writs into third place.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.

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