The court's 2009 statistics (YTD)
Last week the Supreme Court of Washington concluded its Spring Term. With that milestone, we are introducing a new feature here at the blog. Every term we will track the opinions and votes of each justice, and will provide a spreadsheet with a case-by-case breakout. Here are the raw numbers for January - June 2009.
A few trends are worth noting in the charts below.
Number of Opinions by Justice
|
Justice |
Majority Opinions |
Concurring Opinions |
Dissents |
Total Opinions |
|
Alexander |
2 |
1 |
3 |
6 |
|
C.Johnson |
4 |
0 |
3 |
7 |
|
Madsen |
8 |
9 |
5 |
22 |
|
Sanders |
5 |
1 |
8 |
14 |
|
Chambers |
10 |
0 |
1 |
11 |
|
Owens |
3 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
|
Fairhurst |
5 |
2 |
4 |
11 |
|
J.Johnson |
0 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
Stephens |
10 |
2 |
1 |
13 |
(more after the jump)
Frequency in the Majority
|
Justice |
Majority Votes* |
Total Votes |
% in Majority |
Unanimous Opinions** |
|
Alexander |
37 |
47 |
79% |
1 |
|
C.Johnson |
40 |
47 |
85% |
2 |
|
Madsen |
41 |
47 |
87% |
1 |
|
Sanders |
33 |
46 |
72% |
3 |
|
Chambers |
41 |
47 |
87% |
7 |
|
Owens |
43 |
47 |
91% |
2 |
|
Fairhurst |
38 |
45 |
84% |
3 |
|
J.Johnson |
37 |
47 |
79% |
0 |
|
Stephens |
37 |
40 |
93% |
4 |
*Including concurring votes
**Including cases that were unanimous in results only
Number of Decisions by Vote Count
|
Splits |
Number of Cases |
% of Total |
|
9-0 |
22 |
46% |
|
8-1 |
3 |
6% |
|
8-0 |
1 |
2% |
|
7-2 |
4 |
8% |
|
6-3 |
10 |
21% |
|
6-2 |
1 |
2% |
|
5-4 |
7 |
15% |
A few observations:
Justice Debra Stephens did not participate in a number of cases where she joined the court after the case was argued, or cases in which she participated as a judge on the Court of Appeals before she was elevated to the Supreme Court. Even so, the court's junior member has been busy, writing 10 majority opinions this year -- the most for any justice (a position she shares with Justice Tom Chambers, who also wrote ten).
Justice Barbara Madsen takes top marks as the most prolific justice, writing 22 opinions so far, while Justice Richard Sanders continues to enjoy his role as the court's inveterate dissenter. Sanders authored eight dissenting opinions, including a case where he dissented to his own opinion. (The case, State v. Daniels, was decided in 2007, with Sanders as the majority author. The Ninth Circuit subsequently ruled on a similar issue, but reached the opposite conclusion. The state Supreme Court granted a motion for reconsideration in Daniels, but upheld Sanders' original ruling, with Sanders dissenting.)
Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, which sees many narrow 5-4 decisions, the state Supreme Court enjoys a number of strong majority opinions, with nearly half of its rulings unanimous or 9-0 in the outcome. Justices will frequently concur in the result of an opinion, while employing a separate rationale for reaching his or her conclusion.
(Note: Feel free to use these numbers, but we'd appreciate if you'd cite the Supreme Court of Washington Blog as the source.)
This is very interesting, Mike, and useful. Thanks for doing it. One further observation about Chief Justice Alexander. It is, or at least used to be, the case that the Chief Justice, by virtue of his or her administrative duties, takes on less case assignments per term. So CJ Alexander's somewhat low opinion numbers would seem to have an asterisk by them. Interesting, though, that a couple other justices have similar numbers without the break from case assignments.
Kris, a good point -- one I neglected to make.