With a brief and oral argument in State v. Mattox, the Gavels of the Public Defender’s Office climbed to within three points of the league-leading Affirmed.

Current standings

The Gavels of the Public Defender’s Office earned five points (brief and oral argument) in State v. Allen, thereby gaining ground on the league-leading Affirmed, who were idle. 

Current standings

Early in the 2015-16 term, Justice Abrahamson expressed concern over two aspects of the court’s docket: (1) the meager number of cases scheduled, and (2) the large percentage of these cases that had arrived as per curiam decisions from the court of appeals.  Per curiam decisions “do not involve ‘new or unsettled questions of general importance,’” she wrote, citing the “Wisconsin Court of Appeals Internal Operating Procedures,” and she wondered if the supreme court was relying too heavily on these comparatively insignificant decisions to repopulate its docket.

Number of cases accepted for review

Prompted by such misgivings, a SCOWstats investigation compared the court’s docket at the end of October 2015 with the dockets at the same juncture in each of the preceding 20 terms (1995-96 through 2014-15).  The findings showed that the court had indeed accepted fewer cases through October 2015 than it had during the same period in any of the previous years.  As it turned out, this drought in the autumn of 2015 foreshadowed an output at the end of the term (August 2016) that amounted to fewer decisions filed than in any other term in the entire 25 years covered by SCOWstats.  Thus, a look at the justices’ docket through October of the current term allows us to compare it with the court’s work over the past two decades—and, when supplemented by data from November, December, and January, will furnish an accurate indication of what to anticipate at the end of the term this summer.[Continue Reading…]

The Fantasy League’s second season has opened with the Affirmed seizing the early lead.  Foley and Lardner led the way with 10 points (brief, oral argument, and favorable decision in Regency West Apartments v. City of Racine), while Aiken & Scoptur contributed 8 (brief and favorable decision in Seifert v. Balink).  With these 18 points, the Affirmed are nearly half way already to their total of 37 for the entire 2015-16 season.

The Citations, Writs, and Waivers were all idle, but the defending champion Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office tallied 5 points (brief, oral argument, unfavorable decision) in State v. Weber.

Current standings

Tuesday’s post on amicus briefs noted, among other things, the steady decline in the number of these briefs filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court over the past several years—in contrast to the growing number at the United States Supreme Court.  A reader has kindly directed my attention to Justice Abrahamson’s concurrence in State v. Loomis, which gives voice to her frustration over the court’s handling of motions for permission to file amicus briefs.

One aspect of Justice Abrahamson’s complaint is an assertion that the court’s orders granting or denying such motions have been opaque and inconsistent.  These “orders generally do not explain the court’s decision,” she observed.  “[T]hey do not guide lawyers and other interested persons in filing amicus briefs in future cases; and they do not provide the benefit of reasoned decisions so that the court can be thoughtful and consistent in its approach to amicus briefs.”[Continue Reading…]

“The amicus growth spurt is significant and shows no sign of slowing down,” observed two professors at William & Mary Law School in a post titled “The Amicus Machine.”  Writing about the United States Supreme Court, they furnished compelling evidence of an amicus proliferation of dramatic proportions.  In 2015-16, for instance, nearly every case before the justices included amicus briefs—863 in all, averaging 13 per case—roughly double the volume just two decades before.  It did not seem farfetched to proclaim, as the authors did in their opening sentence, that “we are living in the age of the Supreme Court amicus.”

No such declaration could be made for Wisconsin, however, where data from the last two decades reveal the largest number of amicus briefs in the middle third of the period, followed by a precipitous decline thereafter, as apparent in the table below.^[1]  Thus, an Amicus Age may be resplendent at the US Supreme Court, but only a muted equivalent glimmered in Madison, and it quickly expired.

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Expanded teams have been formed in anticipation of the law-firm Fantasy League’s second season (for details on the league and its new teams, click here).   Periodic scoring updates will be posted beginning early in 2017. 

During SCOWstats’s recent series of posts on the number of decisions filed by the supreme courts of Wisconsin and neighboring states, Victor Forberger kindly brought to my attention some interesting figures regarding the output of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (hereafter MSJC).  Not to put too fine a point on it, the MSJC files an enormous number of decisions each year by Midwestern standards, as the following table indicates.^[1]  Compare the MSJC average for the last three years (161 decisions/year) with the annual averages over a similar period for Wisconsin (52 decisions), Minnesota (91 decisions), Iowa (80 decisions), Illinois (66 decisions), and Michigan (27 decisions).^[2][Continue Reading…]

Our efforts to weigh the supreme court in Wisconsin against those in Minnesota and Iowa have found that the record compiled of late by the justices in Madison diverges from the performance of their colleagues in Minnesota and Iowa with regard to (1) the number of decisions filed per term, (2) the length of these decisions, and (3) certain measures of polarization.  Today, by adding the supreme courts of Illinois and Michigan to this enterprise, we’ll see if Wisconsin remains an outlier even after the inclusion of two more entries on our spectrum of state supreme courts.[Continue Reading…]

Last June, an examination of two measures of polarization among the justices of the Wisconsin and Minnesota Supreme Courts found significant differences between the two states but left open the question of which state’s figures were more “normal.” Only the inclusion of data from other states can lead to an answer, and we’ll take a step in this direction by inviting Iowa to join the portrait previously sketched of Wisconsin and Minnesota.[Continue Reading…]