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Sunday, June 01, 2008

Courts - Arkansas Supreme Court rated highly in a U of Chicago study

Thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing, here is a report from Saturday's Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Some quotes:

The Arkansas Supreme Court was rated highly in a study made public this month in a University of Chicago Law School working paper series based on opinions written by members of state high courts in 1998-2000.

The study, titled “Which States Have the Best (and Worst ) High Courts ?” ranked Arkansas’ court as second to California in one combination of factors it weighed as a means of evaluating the state courts.

“California comes out at the top, as it has in other academic studies,” said the study. “More surprisingly, Arkansas comes in second.” Arkansas was cited as one of the “top contenders” for best court in the nation.

The study looked at the number of opinions the justices wrote, the number of times their opinions were cited in the rulings by judges in other states, and the independence of the judges to differ with their colleagues.

Here is a link to the 51-page study. According to the abstract:
This paper ranks the high courts of the fifty states, based on their performance during the years 1998-2000, along three dimensions: opinion quality (or influence as measured by out-of-state citations), independence (or non-partisanship), and productivity (opinions written). We also discuss ways of aggregating these measures. California and Delaware had the most influential courts; Georgia and Mississippi had the most productive courts; and Rhode Island and New York had the most independent courts. If equal weight is given to each measure, then the top five states were: California, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, and Ohio. We compare our approach and results with those of other scholars and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose influential rankings are based on surveys of lawyers at big corporations.
See particularly pp. 21-23, re composite measures with identical weightings for each factor. Under this ranking, California is #1, Arkansas #2, and Indiana appears to be in the lower third. But there are plenty of other tables. See the study's conclusions on page 32.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Posted to Courts in general