Request for Question Clarification by
justaskscott-ga
on
09 Dec 2002 18:30 PST
The latter statistic would be practically impossible to determine.
Litigants appeal numerous U.S. Court of Appeals decisions to the U.S.
Supreme Court. Each decision might be based on more than one ground.
And each appellant might choose one or more of those grounds -- or
even grounds that the Court of Appeals did not mention -- as the basis
for the appeal. One would have to hunt through all of the decisions
of the Court of Appeals and petitions to the Supreme Court (or
presuming they exist, all summaries of those decisions and petitions),
and then compare all of the rejected cases to the cases that were
successful within the following three years. A daunting task!
Without having researched the first question yet, I suppose that the
information would exist for cases that explicitly reversed a previous
ruling within the prior three years. However, it becomes difficult to
say whether a ruling "in effect" reversed a previous ruling. If the
Supreme Court does not explicitly overrule the previous ruling, it
presumably means to let it stand, at least in certain instances --
though perhaps the Court will later say that it did then effectively
overrule the prior ruling, and thereby make the overruling explicit.
So, my question is, would you be satisfied with an answer that stated
the number of times that the Supreme Court explicitly reversed one of
its rulings from the prior three years, during the period 1970-2001?
