This is likely the last of the end o’ term stats posts for the year.
For the fourth year in a row, we looked at which judges were most likely to vote for the same prevailing party as which other judges. The most likely pairings remained fairly consistent from last year with greater variability for the least likely pairings. This year’s top three combinations were also last year’s top three combinations, though the order within the top three changed. Over the past four years, the most persistent likely pairings have been Judge Erdmann & Judge Ryan and Chief Judge Effron & Judge Erdmann. Of course, Chief Judge Effron will retire from the court at the end of this month, so next year’s results will look very different.
There were 17 non-unanimous decisions by CAAF. Six involved lone dissents — three by Chief Judge Effron and three by Judge Baker. Eleven decisions were 3-2. Here are the number of times in which the CAAF judges voted for the same prevailing part in non-unanimous cases. Previous years’ rankings for that pairing follow in brackets:
1. Chief Judge Effron & Judge Erdmann (12/17) [3] [3] [3]
2. Judge Stucky & Judge Ryan (11/17) [1] [7] [5]
3. Judge Erdmann & Judge Ryan (9/17) [2] [2] [2]
4. [TIE] Judge Baker & Judge Stucky (8/17) [4] [4] [10]
Judge Erdmann & Judge Stucky (8/17) [7] [10] [7]
6. Judge Baker & Judge Ryan (7/17) [7] [8] [7]
7. Judge Baker & Judge Erdmann (6/17) [10] [8] [6]
8. Chief Judge Effron & Judge Ryan (5/17) [7] [4] [9]
9. [TIE] Chief Judge Effron & Judge Baker (4/17) [6] [1] [1]
Chief Judge Effron & Judge Stucky (4/17) [4] [4] [3]
