SCOCA is spending more time writing fewer and longer decisions
Overview -- The California Supreme Court is taking more time to decide fewer cases, and its majority opinions are getting longer. In the past, when the court was writing shorter majority opinions it did so faster and produced more of them. The current condition in general stems from trends in automatic appeals and civil cases, with each case type showing distinct contributing effects. These general and specific trends are most pronounced after recent trend inflections revealed significant distinctions between the case types. The court is deciding fewer automatic appeals and taking much longer to decide them. But these decisions are not getting longer. The court is deciding even fewer noncapital cases, at about its regular pace. And these decisions are getting longer. Thus, there is no direct correlation between the court’s overall productivity and either its drafting time or its opinion word count — the effects we see are instead case-type-specific. It’s only in combination that these distinct effects produce the general condition of fewer decisions, which take longer to decide, with longer opinions.
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