As we noted here, the Judicial Council recently issued its 2014 Court Statistics Report, with detailed statistics on caseload trends at all levels of the judicial branch. The report includes data for the ten years leading up to and including fiscal 2012-2013, which ended on June 30, 2013. The report reveals that the Supreme Court issued more opinions in fiscal 2013, with 94 written opinions issued compared with the previous year’s 87. The 94 opinions issued in fiscal 2013 is about par for the course, with the Court having issued 98 opinions in fiscal 2011. The Court also ordered depublished 16 opinions of the Court of Appeal, which is in line with the moderate but consistent rate of depublication we have observed in the years since Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye took over from her predecessor, Ronald M. George.
With the exception of the increase in the Supreme Court’s written opinions, however, the Report largely tells a story of statistical decline. Total petitions for review fell to 4,188, down significantly from 4,620 in the previous fiscal year and 4,999 the year before. Filings of civil petitions for review exhibited a similar decline. There were just 1,108 civil petitions for review filed in fiscal 2013, compared with 1,203 in fiscal 2012 and 1,247 in fiscal 2011.
Original writ proceedings filed in the Supreme Court also declined in fiscal 2013, with 2,911 such filings compared to 3,581 in fiscal 2012 and 4,082 original proceedings filed in fiscal 2011. Original civil writ proceedings displayed an even more precipitous decline, with just 174 initiated in fiscal 2013, compared with 294 in the previous fiscal year, and 507 the year before that.
We are typically reluctant to speculate about the possible reasons for a statistical trend, but here the cause of the decline in filings seems pretty clear. Justice Douglas Miller, chair of the Judicial Council’s Executive and Planning Committee, blamed the “worrisome” decrease in court filings on several years of judicial branch budget cuts. Justice Miller said those cuts, in turn, have resulted in “the increase in court filing fees to offset General Fund budget cuts and closure of courthouses and/or the reduction of hours at our courthouses.” As the Court noted last year in its 2013 Workload Statistics Report, these factors, plus staff furloughs, have hindered the flow of cases through the system and have thus reduced the number of filings in the Supreme Court.
