For the past few weeks, we've been studying the Illinois
Supreme Court's oral arguments between 2008 and 2016.
This week, we address a new question: is there a correlation
between the result – reversal or affirmance – and the
total number of questions? Or to put it in less mathematical
language, does an active bench at oral argument mean that the Court
is likely to reverse?
In Table 441, we report the average questions to appellants, to
appellees, and total to both sides in civil cases, divided by
affirmances and reversals. We see that the answer to our
initial question is yes – although the effect isn't
dramatic, all other things being equal, a more active bench
suggests a reversal. On both sides, we see the result we
identified a few weeks ago: the loser gets more questions.
Our data consists of 118 affirmances and 177 reversals in civil
cases since 2008. In affirmances, appellants have averaged
18.21 questions to only 8.773 for appellees. For
