The supreme court filed only one decision this week (Maple Grove Country Club Inc. v. Maple Grove Estates Sanitary District), but it produced a significant change in the league standings. On the strength of 10 points from Boardman & Clark (for a brief, oral argument, and favorable outcome) and 5 points from von Briesen & Roper (for a brief and oral argument), the Waivers surged out of the cellar, surpassing the Affirmed and the Writs and landing just a point shy of the second-place Citations.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.

A recent post on “text mining” at the Wisconsin Supreme Court examined majority opinions by running them through Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software (LIWC).^[1] Today, we’ll apply LIWC to dissents from the same period (2015-16 through 2017-18) and compare the findings with those obtained for the majority opinions. Justices generally do not invest time in writing dissents without an adamant belief that the court has made a significant mistake, so it may be that their prose in dissent will generate different LIWC “scores” than those that we encountered for majority opinions.[Continue Reading…]

Two of the decisions filed this week contributed points to Fantasy League participants. Amicus briefs by Legal Action of Wisconsin (in Security Finance v. Brian Kirsch) and the Frank J. Remington Center (in State v. Garcia) each delivered a point to their teams—the Writs and the Citations respectively. However, they could not keep pace with the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office, who tightened their grip on first place by adding 6 points for a brief, oral argument, and 3-3 per curiam outcome in State v. Garcia.

For complete, updated standings, click here.

The supreme court did not file any decisions this week–hence, no change in the standings.

Specialized computer programs can inspect large document collections for information that researchers would have difficulty detecting unaided. One such tool is Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software (LIWC), devised to study “the various emotional, cognitive, and structural components present in individual’s verbal and written speech samples.”^[1] A number of journal articles have employed LIWC to scrutinize United States Supreme Court opinions,^[2] and I thought that it might be worthwhile to see what this text-mining equipment could unearth when applied to opinions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[Continue Reading…]

The lone decision filed this week did not result in any points for Fantasy League teams–hence, no change in the standings.

This is a monthly reminder to readers to “nominate” Wisconsin Supreme Court cases from the 2018-19 term that contain surprising aspects.  As I did last year, I will maintain a collection of cases and comments submitted and post them at the end of the summer. (Click here to see the results for 2017-18.)

“Surprising aspects” could include (1) decisions featuring odd combinations of justices dissenting or in the majority; (2) arguments in a majority or separate opinion that one might not expect from the author in question; (3) an unusual source in a footnote; (4) a popular-culture reference out of the blue; (5) a humorous passage; (6) a case in which a husband and wife delivered oral arguments on opposing sides; (7) something else unusual about the law firms involved—in short, pretty much anything unexpected.

Please email me your nominations (alan.ball@marquette.edu), as many as you wish, confident in the assurance that I will not reveal the names of nominators or their firms when I display our harvest at the end of the summer.  Please also include a brief explanation (just a sentence or two would likely be sufficient) indicating the case’s curious feature.  I hope that we can gather enough to yield an interesting array.

This week, the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office padded their lead with five points from a brief and oral argument in State v. Fugere.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.

Next week, a small percentage of Wisconsin’s eligible voters will choose Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s successor on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. As it happens, the two contenders for her seat—Brian Hagedorn and Lisa Neubauer—are not only both judges on the court of appeals, they have sat in the same district ever since Hagedorn’s appointment to the court by Governor Scott Walker in 2015. During this period, they have decided hundreds of cases together, thereby furnishing us an opportunity to assess a substantial voting record.[Continue Reading…]

The four decisions filed this week boosted the standing of three teams. With 8 points from Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren (for a brief and a favorable decision, but no oral argument, in Kieninger v. Crown Equipment), the Waivers gained the most ground, followed by the Affirmed (5 points from Lindner & Marsack for a brief and oral argument in Milwaukee District Council 48 v. Milwaukee County) and the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office (5 points for a brief and oral argument in State v. Keister). Consequently, the Gavels edged ahead of the Citations back into first place, while both the Waivers and the Affirmed crept closer to the third-place Writs.

Click here for the complete, updated standings.