UPDATES & ANALYSIS

The Iowa Supreme Court’s 2013-2014 Term: By the Numbers

by Ryan Koopmans | August 18, 2014

By Ryan Koopmans

The Iowa Supreme Court’s 2013-2014 term is over  (with the exception of a few pending petitions for rehearing on late-decided cases), so it’s time for our annual statistical review.

The Basics. The court decided 107 cases this term, including those cases that were affirmed by operation of law when the court was evenly divided.  That is a slight increase from the 100 cases decided in the 2012-2013 term.  A majority of the cases, 58, were civil; 25 were criminal or related cases; 20 were attorney disciplinary cases; and 4 were juvenile or related cases.

Split Opinions. The vast majority of cases, 75, were unanimous; 69 of these cases were completely unanimous with no concurring opinions and 6 had a concurring opinion.   That leaves 32 opinions, or 29.9% of the cases, in which one or more justices dissented.  This is essentially the same percentage of dissents as last year when 30.0% of the cases had a dissent.  Seventeen of these cases were decided by one vote — with a split of 4-3, or when one justice was recused a split of 3-3 or 4-2.

Chief Justice Cady’s Court. Of the 32 non-unanimous opinions, Chief Justice Cady was in the majority the most often, 89% of the time, followed by Justice Appel at 81% of the time.  Justice Waterman was in the majority the least often, only 43% of the time, followed by Justice Mansfield, 46%.   Chief Justice Cady was only in the dissent in 3 cases all term, and only once in a case that was decided 4-3 or 3-3.  (That case was State v. Lukins, in which Justice Zager wrote the majority opinion joined by Justices Wiggins, Hecht, and Appel.)  That’s a change from two terms ago, when Justice Zager was the “decider,” having been in the majority in every case.

Opinion Productivity. In the 107 decided cases, 169 separately signed opinions were written by the seven justices.  Justice Mansfield was the most prolific writer, authoring 37 opinions, followed by Justices Appel and Waterman, who each authored 27 opinions.  Justice Hecht and Chief Justice Cady wrote the fewest opinions with 18 opinions each.  A similar pattern held true with respect to the 101 signed majority opinions.  Justice Mansfield again wrote the most, authoring 20 majority opinions, followed by Justice Appel who wrote 16 majority opinions.  Justice Hecht wrote the fewest majority opinions, 11, followed by Justice Zager who wrote 12, and Chief Justice Cady who wrote 13 majority opinions.  In the most closely divided cases decided by one vote, Chief Justice Cady wrote the most majority opinions, 6, while Justice Zager wrote the fewest, 2.

Justice Agreement. For the third time in as many terms, there were two relatively consistent voting blocs, with  Justices Wiggins, Hecht, and Appel on one end, and Justices Waterman and Mansfield on the other.  The Chief Justice and Justice Zager continue to fall somewhere in between, agreeing with each of their colleagues between 40-70% of the time. The justices that agreed the least were Justice Mansfield and Justice Wiggins who agreed in 13% of the non-unanimous cases.  In the 17 cases that were most closely divided, all but two were split with Justices Wiggins, Appel and Hecht on one side, Justice Waterman, Mansfield, and Zager on the other, and Chief Justice Cady deciding which group was in the majority.

Here’s a complete breakdown of how often each justice agreed with his colleagues in the 32 non-unanimous decisions (putting aside disciplinary cases).  Note, however, that some of the justices recused themselves in one or two of these cases, so the denominator isn’t always 32.   Also, for comparison, the second and third charts show how often each justice agreed with his colleagues in the previous terms.

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court