The Supreme Court doesn’t have an official term, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, but September 1 to August 31 is a logical unofficial term because the court doesn’t hear oral arguments in July or August and, due to the 90-day rule, opinions in cases argued before the summer hiatus normally file by the end of August.
As we did a year ago (here and here), we present a rare (for us) quantitative analysis of the court. Like last year, we’ll look at the most recently completed term in two parts. Today, we’re looking at numbers for categories other than those relating to the court’s opinions. And, speaking of unofficial, that’s what the numbers are. They were gathered by reviewing blog posts about the court’s conferences during the term. Miscounting by me is always a possibility.
Straight Grants
There were 35 straight grants (down from 46 the previous term), 22 in civil cases and 13 in criminal cases. Included in the criminal category are technically civil but criminally related matters, such as habeas corpus and Sexually Violent Predators Act cases. Included as a straight grant is an agreement by the court to answer a question of California law referred by the Ninth Circuit.
Grant-and-Holds
The court granted-and-held 193 criminal cases and 45 civil cases. (It was 177 and 32 for the 2022-2023 term.)
Depublications
The court depublished just five Court of Appeal opinions, three in civil cases and two in criminal cases. (There were 15 depublications — mostly in civil cases — in the 2022-2023 term.) Not counted are opinions depublished by a Supreme Court grant-and-transfer order directing the Court of Appeal to vacate its prior opinion (see here).
The court’s own term review (see here) reports seven depublications. I’m not sure why there’s a discrepancy; perhaps the court’s review does count orders to vacate.
Recorded Dissents
Straight grants might have been down, but not for lack of effort by some justices. Justices recorded votes dissenting from denials of petitions for review or for habeas corpus 66 times, twice as many as in the 2022-2023 term. Most of the dissenting votes — 58 — were in criminal cases.
Four cases had three votes for review. In 18 other cases there were two votes for review. A number of the two-justice dissenting votes were by Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans in youth offender parole cases, a trend that is continuing this term (see here).
Here is the tally of dissenting votes by justice:
- Justice Goodwin Liu: 25 dissenting votes (23 in criminal cases; 2 in civil cases).
- Justice Kelli Evans: 25 dissenting votes (22 in criminal cases; 3 in civil cases).
- Justice Joshua Groban: 10 dissenting votes (8 in criminal cases; 2 in civil cases).
- Justice Martin Jenkins: 5 dissenting votes (all in criminal cases).
- Justice Leondra Kruger: 1 dissenting vote (in a civil case).
- Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero and Justice Carol Corrigan didn’t record any dissenting votes.
Separate Statements
Occasionally, a justice will publish a separate statement when the court denies review. There were nine of those statements during the term.
- Justice Groban wrote one statement in dissent and three concurring. Justices Liu and Evans signed the dissent and two of the concurrences. One concurring statement was a solo effort.
- Justice Evans wrote one dissenting statement and two concurring. Justice Liu signed all three of Justice Evans’s separate statements and Justice Groban joined in one of the concurrences.
- Justice Liu — who in 2015 revived the separate statement practice — wrote two separate statements, one dissenting and one concurring. Justice Evans signed both and Justice Groban joined the dissent.
