With the close of 2018, the statistics for opinion disposition by the Texas Supreme Court are in. I’m still crunching numbers and will follow this post with additional statistics, but here’s what some of the preliminary data show for the 2018 calendar year:
- 98 causes were disposed of. That’s the highest in 5 years and 14 more than in 2017 and 2016.
- 24 per curiam (unsigned) opinions were issued. That number is about the same as in the prior two years, so it appears that the bulk of the increase in overall causes disposed of came from matters disposed of with oral argument
- 11 of the causes disposed of were original proceedings (10 mandamuses and 1 original petition). This number is up slightly from prior years and may explain in part the higher disposition rate overall.
- The overall reversal rate for cases taken on petition for review is within the average for the last few years, coming in at 78.4%.
I’ll be rolling out additional statistical information in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.