CJLF has compiled a summary of the criminal, habeas, and law-enforcement-related civil cases of the United States Supreme Court for the term just ended. The table is sorted by whether the case came from a state or federal court, then by jurisdiction, then by decision date.
We see that once again reversing the Ninth Circuit takes up a disproportionate share of the Supreme Court's criminal docket. There are 7 cases from the Ninth, over a third of all the cases from the numbered circuits, significantly more than the Ninth's proportionate share of the population. All 7 are reversals. All 7 had been decided in favor of the defendant or prisoner by the Ninth. Five out of 7 are unanimous reversals. These data provide further confirmation that the Ninth's en banc review process is not functioning. The en banc court is supposed to overturn clearly wrong panel decisions, but it fails to do so when they favor the defendant, forcing the Supreme Court to pick up that load.
We also see the Supreme Court taking a large number of criminal cases from the state courts. With greater restrictions on federal habeas corpus, we can expect to see the high court taking more cases directly from the state courts in order to resolve constitutional questions directly without the limitations of habeas.
Overall, the high court reversed about 2/3 of the cases it accepted, in line with the historical average. The prosecution/law enforcement side did well, winning about 2/3 of the time.
A somewhat surprising result is that state courts were affirmed half the time in cases accepted by the Supreme Court for review. Federal courts were reversed 4-to-1. It may be that in granting certiorari in state court cases the high court is looking for good vehicles to resolve disputed questions, while in cases from the federal courts it is more often engaged in simple error correction.
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