2008 Judicial Administration Project:
Editor’s Note

I. Introduction

As Editor-in-Chief of the Mississippi College Law Review, it is my pleasure to present the initial results of our first annual Judicial Administration Project.  This summer, when my staff and I met to discuss this year’s goals and objectives, a recurring theme appeared in our discourse.  In an academic culture focused chiefly on citation rates and well-published authors, we discovered a need for practical commentary on issues faced daily by practicing attorneys.   Primarily, we wanted to make our Journal—and its related projects—more relevant to the state and local legal community. 

In order to achieve the desired relevance, we initially decided to add a third, “Mississippi-based” journal to our annual publication schedule.  However, we recognized that relevance could not be achieved by the mere addition of scholarly work, and that the members of the Law Review deserved a project that would also serve to enrich their understanding of the practice of law in this state.  Thus, in an effort to accomplish our goals, and in light of recent passionate—and increasingly acrimonious—debates about the performance of the Mississippi judiciary, [FN1] our Law Review decided to undertake a large-scale study focused exclusively on the Mississippi Supreme Court.  Drawing inspiration from a similar project appearing in Law Week, which tracks the decisional patterns of the U.S. Supreme Court, we sought to gather information on the Mississippi Court’s treatment of plaintiffs and defendants in various contexts, the Justices’ patterns of voting together, and their tendencies to author majority, dissenting, and concurring opinions.

Various members of the legal community have expressed an interest in like projects, [FN2] but the Law Review, as a large, diverse, and politically neutral body is uniquely situated to accumulate the relevant data.  Please note, though, that this study was launched as a strictly educational exercise, conducted exclusively by students, and the data produced is subject to human error.  Still, while I willingly admit that we are unqualified to calculate margins of error, we have made every effort to remove subjectivity from the study.  In order to make the process more transparent, the following describes the procedures employed in the execution of this project.

II.  Methodology

As stated above, this study involves only the Mississippi Supreme Court.  While we hope that future Boards will endeavor to expand the time period that the project encompasses, and to commence similar analyses of the Court of Appeals, we simply could not do so this year. 

We initially executed a search to produce all reported Mississippi Supreme Court opinions beginning on January 1, 2004.  After the removal of table opinions, approximately 950 cases remained.  Additionally, only eight Justices were examined for the purposes of the project.  Justices Pittman, Cobb, and Lamar appeared in some of the cases, but were excluded from this study either because the applicable samples were too small, or because their departure from the Court renders further analysis unnecessary.

The opinions were then divided evenly among the Law Review’s 49 members, who completed “Judicial Administration Worksheets” for each of their assigned cases.  The worksheets called for the case name and citation, the nature of the suit, the court below and the name of its judge, the Supreme Court Justices authoring and joining in the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions, and the specific disposition of the Court.  To avoid the interpretive problems that arise when 49 students apply their personal interpretations of the “nature” of the suit, members copied, verbatim, the case topics appearing on the corresponding MLi Bulletin [FN3] for the case in question.  While the data on these worksheets will eventually be entered into a computer database, the original calculations were performed—chiefly by third year law students—using pre-prepared charts and written instructions.  Questions about our methodology are welcome, and may be directed to our Law Review e-mail address.[FN4] The specific procedures employed in gathering the data reflected in each of the charts below will appear underneath the relevant chart.

III.  Invitation

Note that the data presented here are merely the preliminary findings of our study, and that further information will be posted as the year progresses.  We invite you to visit the site frequently to view our additional analyses.  Furthermore, members of the legal community desiring to publish academic commentary on the findings should contact the Editorial Board using the information available on this site.  In particular, analysis of these findings would be appropriate for the new Mississippi Practitioner’s Journal, which will be written chiefly by practicing attorneys.  Thank you for your interest and support.

Lindsey N. Oswalt
Editor-in-Chief
Mississippi College Law Review

 

Specific Disposition of the Court- ALL Civil Cases

Specific Disposition of the Court-Civil

Take note that this chart displays the disposition of ALL civil cases.  It does not reflect the court’s dispositions on any particular topic.  Instead, it includes everything from contract disputes to domestic issues to will contests.  Procedural matters, including appeals from summary judgment and motions to dismiss, are likewise incorporated.  We hope to eventually make separate analyses for each substantive type of case, but have not yet done so.  The Law Review is not blind to the political ramifications if the above chart is misread.  Plainly, this particular analysis does NOT examine the court’s treatment of business interests in any form.
Where the methodology is concerned, Law Review members were first asked to determine the Supreme Court’s treatment of each civil case examined.  Here, because this study does not encompass the rulings of the Court of Appeals, they first had to ascertain which parties were the plaintiffs and defendants in the trial court, and which party prevailed there.  In some cases, of course, multiple plaintiffs and defendants were involved, and were treated differently according to their individual claims.  Additionally, the Court sometimes rendered a verdict on certain issues, while remanding others to the lower court.  Thus, although the same two third-year students compiled all of these statistics, they did make some qualitative judgments regarding whether the original verdict was substantially affirmed or reversed.  If no reasonable conclusion was possible, and the case was not clearly “affirmed in part and reversed in part,” it was set aside, and not otherwise categorized for the purposes of this particular inquiry.
In great part, claims before the bar commission and the committee on judicial performance—which were also not heard in the circuit and chancery courts—were outside the scope of reasonable classification, and therefore discarded.

Specific Disposition of the Court-Criminal

Specific Disposition of the Court-Criminal

The above chart represents only appeals to the Supreme Court in which the State prevailed at the trial court level. Please note that situations where the defendant’s conviction was affirmed, but remanded for re-sentencing were treated as affirmances.  Additionally, cases in which the Defendant merely sought leave to pursue post-conviction relief were tallied separately, and not included as either reversals or affirmances.

Supreme Court Voting Combinations-Civil AND Criminal

The percentages represented above reflect only scenarios in which both listed Justices were participating in the applicable case.  Thus, if either Justice was not participating in a case, that case was not counted as “voting apart,” it simply was not included in the analysis.
Moreover, the terms “voting together” and “voting apart” should be read literally.  In other words, where both Justices rendered a vote for the same party, they were tallied as “voting together,” even if the Justices employed differing rationales to reach that conclusion.  However, if one Justice concurred, and the other concurred in part and dissented in part, they “voted apart” for the purposes of this particular analysis.

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Civil

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Civil

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Civil

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Civil

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Criminal

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Criminal

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Criminal

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns-Criminal

Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Patterns- Civil AND Criminal
Although the above analyses are largely self-explanatory, there are a few relevant notes on the methodology employed in their production.  The justices were given authorship credit for every opinion written.  For instance, if a Justice authored a “concurrence in part and a dissent in part” she was credited as the author of one concurrence, and also as the author of one dissent.  Furthermore, a Justice was only counted “not participating” if the opinion in question explicitly stated that the he or she was not participating.
Notably, the study also tracked the number of times each judge concurred in part and dissented in part.  However, for the most part, the numbers produced were not large enough to warrant separate analysis.

 

 

Affirmance/Reversal Rates of Circuit Court Judges
The Judges listed above were chosen because their rates of reversal/affirmance comprised a large enough sample to detect a pattern.  While the study evaluated all judges of the circuit and chancery courts whose cases were appealed, analysis of the Court of Appeals is likely necessary to properly discern the treatment of the trial court judges by the appellate bench.

 

 

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