This post is the second in a series of posts
analyzing the 2013-14 term of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. For our
previous post click here.
In our last post, we observed that the Wisconsin Supreme Court
released unanimous opinions more quickly than non-unanimous
opinions and that the court had released opinions very slowly this
year. These two observations raise an important question: Is the
Wisconsin Supreme Court an ideologically divided court? The answer
to this question, based on the voting patterns of the seven
justices in the court's issued opinions, is no.
Only about 26% of the court's opinions this term were 4-3
decisions (16/61). This number is up markedly from 2011-2012 (4)
and from 2012-2013 (9). Yet, while three of four 4-3 decisions in
2011-12 had the same composition of those in the majority and those
in dissent, 2012-13 had five different combinations, and 2013-14
had six:
