Thursday, April 2, 2015
CA3blog on the Third Circuit's Low Published Opinion Rate
Matthew Stiegler's CA3blog dug into the new AO Court Statistics and found that when it comes to issuing published opinions, the Third Circuit doesn't publish very many of them. It publishes the fewest published opinions of any circuit, and finds itself among the high-volume circuits in terms of the percentage of unpublished opinions. Matthew suggests that judicial vacancy is the the likely reason for the Third Circuit's recent spike in its unpublished opinion rate to 92.3%. That seems accurate, though the Third has been hovering in the high-80s for a while now. Judicial vacancy may have pushed them up to the low-90s where the high-volume circuits are.
I hope that Matthew and others watching their particular circuits of interest continue to report on those courts' publication practices. Seven circuits now publish fewer than ten percent of their opinions.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/appellate_advocacy/2015/04/ca3blog-on-the-third-circuits-low-unpublished-opinion-rate.html