The Court of Appeals issued its last decisions of the 2020–2021 Term on Thursday last week, so it’s time to run the numbers. Before we do, don’t forget that the Court also publishes statistics in its Annual Report. Highlights from the Court’s 2020 Report include statistics on time to decision (about 14 months) and time to argument (about 10 months); and statistics about leave-grant rate in civil cases (3.7% granted, 76.2% denied, and 19.7% dismissed) and in criminal cases (1.6% granted, 91.4% denied, 6.4% dismissed).
The Court compiles statistics by calendar year; we track them by Court term because we think that gives us a better sense of the judges’ voting patterns. If you disagree, or if you think we’ve missed something, let us know! You can access our full set of statistics at this link. Here are the takeaways:
- The Court continues to decide fewer cases. The Court issued 66 decisions; that includes 39 signed opinions, 9 memorandum and/or per curiam decisions, and 18 Rule 500.11 (or SSM) decisions. That top-level number is down significantly from prior years: 85 decisions in 2019–2020 and 101 in 2018–2019. Some of that decrease probably reflects COVID-related disruption from the fall. But it also continues a longer trend at the Court of hearing fewer cases. See, e.g., People v. Epakchi, 2021 N.Y. Slip Op. 02018, *9 n.11 (2021) (Wilson, J., dissenting).
- The Court struggled to speak with one voice. The Court issued a unanimous decision in only 45% of cases, although that number was slightly higher on the criminal side (52%) than on the civil side (40%). Interestingly, when the Court decided a case by memorandum decision, the decision was much more likely to be unanimous (87% of the time) than in cases resolved on the SSM track (67% of the time). And the Court was even less likely to resolve civil SSM cases by unanimous decision than criminal SSM cases (50% versus 75%). The Court says that a case will placed on the SSM track “if, for example, it involves narrow issues of law or issues decided by a recent appeal.” These data suggest that the judges may disagree about which cases actually involve narrow or settled issues.
- And yes, there are voting blocks. This will come as no surprise to almost all of you, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t say it out loud: the Court has voting blocks. For example, if the Chief Judge voted one way, chances were good that Judge Feinman (87%) was going to vote that way, and nearly as good that Judge Garcia (81%) would vote that way too. But if the Chief voted one way, chances were very low that Judge Rivera (39%) and only somewhat less low that Judge Wilson (47%) would join her. Meanwhile, if Judge Rivera voted one way, Judge Wilson probably did too, and vice versa (they voted the same way in about 69% of cases resolved by a signed opinion).
- Judge Rivera: hardworking judge, or the hardest-working judge? We’re obviously being tongue-in-cheek here because there’s no accounting for the many, many other things that judges do. But going strictly by the number of writings, Judge Rivera (24) wins the hardest-working-judge award, followed close behind by Judge Wilson (20). We take that number with a grain of salt, but it’s not for nothing that Judge Rivera authored the Court’s majority opinion in only four cases—meaning she earned her hardest-working-judge accolades mostly on the back of her many dissents (16).
- Was Judge Stein the swing judge? The Court issued 11 decisions by a 4–3 vote, and Judge Stein was in the majority in all but one of them. In most of those cases, she sided with the DiFiore-Garcia-Feinman block; she joined the Rivera-Fahey-Wilson block only twice, and both times in criminal cases. She was also in the majority in all but one of the Court’s 5–2 decisions (the lone exception being an SSM), and all but one of the Court’s 4–2 decisions. That, together with the fact that Judge Stein was by far the judge who was most frequently in the majority (95% of cases), and you get a pretty strong case for Judge Stein as the swing. (If you read our interview, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Judge Stein was a consensus-builder.)
You can get the full set of statistics here. If you have any questions, let us know.
Posted on 2021-06-05.