Washington Supreme Court 2010 statistics
Every year we track the opinions and votes of each justice and provide a case-by-case breakout, along with some analysis. Here are the raw numbers for 2010. For comparison purposes, 2009 numbers can be found here.
This year we try to crack the question: Which justice was the most influential in 2010? We’ll announce our pick later today on Wednesday.
First, some general observations. In 2010 the Supreme Court of Washington issued opinions in 140 cases. Nine opinions were per curiam (opinions without an attributed author), a significant increase from last year, which had none. The Court enjoys a high level of agreement: 75 opinions (54% of all cases) were unanimous (including unanimous-in-result-only opinions and per curiam opinions).
Justice Richard Sanders was the most prolific writer this year, with 48 total opinions. Despite her new chief justice duties, Barbara Madsen came in second with 32 total opinions. Justice Debra Stephens wrote the most majority opinions (23). As was the case in 2009, Sanders wrote the most dissents (24) but he also contributed the second-most majorities (17).
Which justices are most likely to agree or disagree with each other? A chart below shows the percentage of cases in which justices voted together (majority and concurring opinions are treated as equivalent). The justices with the highest rates of agreement were Charles Johnson and Owens (89.1%), Chambers and Stephens (87%), and Charles Johnson and Stephens (85.8%). The justices with the lowest rates of agreement were Madsen and Sanders (62.8%), Sanders and Jim Johnson (64.3%), and Sanders and Fairhurst (65.1%).
We also look at the number of days between argument and the court's opinion, broken out by vote count. The rule of thumb is the court takes about six months to issue a decision after hearing arguments. On average, the court took 203 days (down from last year's 223) to issue opinions in the cases where arguments were heard. Fifteen decisions in 2010 were pending for over a year, while 18 cases were disposed of in less than three months. One case, In re Welfare of A.B., which dealt with the restoration of parental rights, sat for 716 days (nearly 24 months) before being resolved.
Finally, we have a chart showing how often each justice was joined by his or her colleagues when authoring an opinion. In other words, when a justice wrote a majority opinion, how many others joined that opinion? Was the dissenter able to pull others to the dissent, or was it a lone dissent?
<Click to see the charts and tables>
| Justice | Majority Opinions | Concurring Opinions | Dissenting Opinions* | Total Written |
| Madsen | 10 | 14 | 8 | 32 |
| C.Johnson | 16 | 2 | 1 | 19 |
| Alexander | 12 | 2 | 10 | 24 |
| Sanders | 17 | 7 | 24 | 48 |
| Chambers | 14 | 6 | 7 | 27 |
| Owens | 12 | 1 | 2 | 15 |
| Fairhurst | 15 | 3 | 9 | 27 |
| J.Johnson | 11 | 6 | 8 | 25 |
| Stephens | 23 | 5 | 2 | 30 |
| Morgan** | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| TOTAL | 131 | 46 | 71 |
*Excludes partial dissents
**Justice Pro Tem Dean Morgan
| C.Johnson | Alexander | Sanders | Chambers | Owens | Fairhurst | J.Johnson | Stephens | |
| Madsen | 82.4% | 78.9% | 62.8% | 73.1% | 82.9% | 84.0% | 80.8% | 80.6% |
| C.Johnson | 82.8% | 70.5% | 84.6% | 89.1% | 80.2% | 76.9% | 85.8% | |
| Alexander | 73.8% | 79.5% | 77.0% | 74.6% | 81.1% | 81.8% | ||
| Sanders | 78.3% | 67.7% | 65.1% | 64.3% | 75.6% | |||
| Chambers | 82.8% | 76.9% | 70.8% | 87.0% | ||||
| Owens | 83.7% | 78.1% | 83.6% | |||||
| Fairhurst | 78.5% | 80.6% | ||||||
| J.Johnson | 73.2% |
| Justice | Majority Votes* | Total Votes** | % in Majority | Unanimous Opinions*** |
| Madsen | 108 | 131 | 82.4% | 3 |
| C.Johnson | 121 | 131 | 92.4% | 6 |
| Alexander | 108 | 128 | 84.4% | 8 |
| Sanders | 95 | 129 | 73.6% | 11 |
| Chambers | 114 | 130 | 87.7% | 7 |
| Owens | 115 | 129 | 89.1% | 6 |
| Fairhurst | 109 | 131 | 83.2% | 8 |
| J.Johnson | 102 | 130 | 78.5% | 4 |
| Stephens | 114 | 124 | 91.9% | 13 |
*Includes concurring votes.
**Excludes per curiam opinions.
***Includes unanimous in result.
| Justice | Majority Opinions | Majority Votes | % in Majority |
| Madsen | 2 | 10 | 45.5% |
| C.Johnson | 3 | 14 | 63.6% |
| Alexander | 1 | 10 | 45.5% |
| Sanders | 1 | 9 | 42.8% |
| Chambers | 2 | 14 | 63.6% |
| Owens | 2 | 11 | 52.4% |
| Fairhurst | 1 | 12 | 54.5% |
| J.Johnson | 4 | 12 | 54.5% |
| Stephens | 6 | 15 | 75.0% |
| Splits | Number of Cases | % of Total |
| 9-0* | 19 | 13.6% |
| 9-0 | 47 | 33.6% |
| 8-1 | 14 | 10.0% |
| 7-2 | 11 | 7.9% |
| 6-3 | 18 | 12.9% |
| 5-4 | 22 | 15.7% |
| per curiam | 9 | 6.4% |
| TOTAL | 140 |
*Unanimous in result only (concurrence or partial dissent filed).
| 9-0 | 120 |
| 8-1 | 182 |
| Court average | 203 |
| 9-0* | 217 |
| 5-4 | 260 |
| 6-3 | 293 |
| 7-2 | 301 |
*Unanimous in result only.
| Justice | Majority | Concurrence | Dissent | Total |
| Madsen | 60 | 11 | 19 | 90 |
| C.Johnson | 100 | 6 | 3 | 109 |
| Alexander | 72 | 2 | 19 | 93 |
| Sanders | 102 | 4 | 21 | 127 |
| Chambers | 82 | 10 | 12 | 104 |
| Owens | 75 | 3 | 6 | 84 |
| Fairhurst | 91 | 3 | 13 | 107 |
| J.Johnson | 59 | 1 | 9 | 69 |
| Stephens | 144 | 7 | 3 | 154 |
(Note: Feel free to use any of these numbers, but we'd appreciate it if you would cite the Supreme Court of Washington Blog as the source.)
The 2010 results appear to be encrypted. The page that comes up when one clicks on the link appears as random sets of letters and numbers and symbols. Totally useless.
Both 2010 & 2009 are now accessible. Thank You.