Numbers don’t lie
New website provides non-partisan analysis of the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Quick, name a supreme court case in Wisconsin between September 2012 and August 2013.
Look it up. We’ll wait.
Nothing? During that time the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard 46 cases.
Most people don’t know the rulings, much less a resource to find them. But a new website is trying to create transparency and make it easier to be informed.
Last year, Dr. Alan Ball, history professor at Marquette University, launched the blog SCOWstats to show each court decision, highlight trends and provide a valuable resource for researchers.
Ball’s website provides a database of decisions by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin from 1999 to 2013. In this Q+A, he discussed his motivation for starting the blog and what it could reveal to investigative journalists and citizens.
The majority of your research covers Russian topics. What drove you to create SCOWstats.com?
My wife is an appellate lawyer, and for years we’ve had conversations about the Wisconsin Supreme Court in which she has expressed a wish that more statistical information were available on the Court’s behavior. In a rash moment, I ventured an opinion that it must surely be possible to do something along these lines, and before I knew it, she introduced me to the Wisconsin court system’s website (containing the Supreme Court’s opinions) and suggested that I see if I could produce some statistical tables similar to those published in SCOTUSblog (on the US Supreme Court).
How far back do you plan to accumulate data?
At the moment, I’m only planning to go back 15-20 years. However, at some point—perhaps because I’ve been trained as a historian—I might consider comparing the Court of recent years with the Court of, say, 50 or 100 years ago. It might be interesting to compare the degree of polarization in Supreme Courts of different eras, as well as the types of issues considered, the most prominent controversies, the number of cases heard, the average number of days to a decision, and so forth.
“As the court’s work has increasingly become a matter of political debate and controversy, it is all the more important for the public to have access to good, nonpartisan information like Dr. Ball’s.” -Michael O’Hear, Marquette University Associate Dean For Research And Professor Of Law
What research projects do you have planned using this information?
This strikes me as the most important question—and also the one that is most difficult for me to address with confidence or precision. Given my lack of experience in the field, I will certainly require additional guidance to get me up to speed. Fortunately, I can rely on my wife and, through her, other appellate experts for assistance. It feels like starting all over again in graduate school, which is one of the exciting aspects of the project for me.
As for research that could arise from the database, I may begin with some analysis pertaining to the Office of the State Public Defender—for instance, the outcomes experienced in the Supreme Court by lawyers from the Public Defender’s Office (perhaps broken down according to types of issues, votes cast by individual justices, types of defendants, and so forth).
It might also be interesting to explore continuity and change in the court’s decisions over the period of 15-20 years mentioned above—the types of cases heard, tendencies to rule in favor of either appellants or respondents, personal injury plaintiffs or insurance companies, criminal defendants or the State, and so forth.
Another avenue of research could examine statistical variations revealed by a comparison of the decisions of individual justices. For example: in one type of case or another, does it matter statistically whether a justice has been supported electorally by substantial funds from a particular source (a wealthy spouse, a large interest group, or smaller, more numerous contributions)? Does it matter whether a justice is male or female in certain types of cases—divorce or child placement cases, for instance. Does it matter whether the justice was appointed to an initial term rather than elected? Does a justice’s voting pattern change as a re-election year approaches?
Eventually, this study could be expanded to compare the nature of Supreme Court decisions in Wisconsin—where the justices are elected—to the decisions of supreme courts in states where the justices are appointed.
“Professor Ball’s statistical analysis will be helpful in determining whether a lack of jury trials or some other issue is affecting the productivity of the court and/or the development of Wisconsin law.” — Susan R. Tyndall, Attorney Habush Habush & Rottier, S.C
How do you see this data being used by the public?
As the SCOWstats blog is publicly available, people are welcome to employ the data to cast light on questions of interest to them. For example, David Pierce, a student graduating this spring from UW-Eau Claire and bound for Michigan State University’s law school, did so in his Capstone project titled “Are Institutional Changes the Source of Wisconsin Supreme Court Dysfunction?” Here he investigated whether and how the Court’s voting patterns changed during competitive election years.
Recent shifts in journalism have created a more data-driven model, how do you foresee your work contributing to this new style?
Journalists appear to pay the most sustained attention to the Court during competitive election campaigns for a seat on the bench. Thus they might well be interested in questions such as those explored by David Pierce, and they could use SCOWstats to assist them in their research. They might also find SCOWstats helpful in resolving more specific issues, such as the contention in the most recent campaign (Roggensack-Fallone) that the Court was deciding far fewer cases in 2012-13 than in previous years—an assertion shown to be accurate by the database.
Research and reporting by Wyatt Massey, a junior studying writing-intensive English and advertising. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
