Insight & Commentary on Texas Appellate Law
I am late in getting these statistics from the 2023 calendar year posted, but as they say, better late than never.
Unanimity. One statistic that I have tracked in recent years is the number of unanimous opinions authored by a justice. This statistic may be an indicator that a justice works with his or…
For pending and unreported cases, the 20th Edition of The Bluebook calls for citation to the LEXIS or Westlaw electronic report of the case when one is available. But if you are in the Fort Worth Court of Appeals, you would be wise to use the citation to Westlaw if it is available.
The Fort…
I continue to track the statistics on the number of petitions for review granted by the Texas Supreme Court where the court of appeals wrote an “Opinion,” versus those where the court of appeals wrote a “Memorandum Opinion.” My prior years’ statistical analysis have dispelled the notion that if the court of appeals writes a…
My review of the statistics from the Texas Supreme Court’s dispositions in 2021 brought an assortment of facts to the forefront that are worth highlighting.
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Parties (and their counsel) to a court of appeals’ disposition of an appeal sometimes worry that if the court disposed of the appeal by issuing a “Memorandum Opinion” instead of an “Opinion,” the chances of obtaining review by the Texas Supreme Court will be diminished. Statistics in recent years have helped to dispel this concern. …
I ran the statistics for the Texas Supreme Court’s cause disposition for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2021, and the breakdown of broader statistics is shown below. As with prior years, I will follow up with additional data as I crunch more of the numbers.
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Last year, I reported that the Texas Supreme Court granted a record number of petitions for review in cases where the court of appeals had issued an opinion designated as a “Memorandum Opinion.” The statistics seem to dispel the notion that there is an inherent bias against review of “Memorandum Opinions.
In 2020, the number…
Two years ago, I noted that the data shows that the Texas Supreme Court grants a disproportionate number of petitions for review that come through certain intermediate appellate courts. One of those intermediate appellate courts is the Third Court of Appeals District, informally known as the Austin Court of Appeals. That trend continues.
Focusing on…
