Monday, October 01, 2007

End of term stats

CAAF's end of term stats are out -- they are included in the 28 September daily docket.

To me, the most interesting statistic is the number of petitions filed. While the number is lower than last year's it is still well above the recent average. Here are the numbers for this year and the previous five terms

2007: 937 petitions filed
2006: 1,006 petitions filed
2005: 779 petitions filed
2004: 802 petitions filed
2003: 694 petitions filed
2002: 974 petitions filed

So over the previous five terms, the mean number of petitions filed was 851, compared to 937 for the just completed term.
Posted by Dwight Sullivan at 10:57 PM

4 comments:

Jason Grover said...

While petitions filed is interesting, isn't petitions granted a much more valuable stat? In the fine tradition of Moneyball, let's look at the stats that are most meaningful.

Tue Oct 02, 09:09:00 AM EDT
Dwight Sullivan said...

Super G,

Petitions granted wasn't one of the statistics posted.

Tue Oct 02, 08:26:00 PM EDT
Christopher Mathews said...

"Petitions filed" is an interesting statistic nonetheless, because it suggests (a) more cases with discernable issues are flowing through the CCAs, (b) the appellate defense shops are taking a more aggressive look at the cases they have, or (c) some combination of the two.

From my own experience, there was a glut of more complicated cases at the Air Force court in 2005, a backlog largely wiped out by the end of 2006. Flooding those cases into the system would likely be a contributing factor to (a), above. There may have been a similar effect at the NMCCA as they began focusing more intently on post-trial timeliness.

The AFCCA released a record number of opinions for that court in 2006. Does anyone happen to know how the other CCAs did?

Wed Oct 03, 12:40:00 PM EDT
John O'Connor said...

I also imagine that the raw number iof petitions filed can be skewed in years where there is a "global" issue pending before the CAAF and pretty much everybody files a petition for review on the issue that is pending.

When I was a summer funner at Code 46, I recall that virtually all cases involved a petition to preserve the Appointments Clause/Due Process issue that ultimately got resovled in Weiss v. United States. If the stats count all of these petitions, that would really skew the results from year to year.

Wed Oct 03, 02:07:00 PM EDT

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