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supreme statistics
I was moved to find out a little about US state supreme courts. Maybe what inspired me was thinking about the spacious local courtroom I did my jury service in a couple weeks ago, and how much larger it was than the intimate little room in which the North Dakota State Supreme Court meets. Do they not expect anyone to be interested in their proceedings?
I got my info from each court's official site on the Web.
Most states call their final court of appeals the Supreme Court. A few use variants like "Supreme Judicial Court" (Massachusetts and some others) or "Supreme Court of Appeals" (West Virginia). Two states don't use "supreme" and just call it the Court of Appeals (Maryland and New York). Confusingly, New York calls its lower level of appeals courts collectively the Supreme Court. (That I already knew.)
In two states, the Supreme Court doesn't hear criminal appeals: there's a separate court for that (Oklahoma and Texas).
Most states have 7 justices. Sixteen states, mostly small ones, have 5. Only five have 9, as the U.S. Supreme Court does (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington).
Three states are so pissant they don't have biographies of the justices on the web site (Arkansas, Rhode Island, and Virginia).
But we can still generalize. Here's a contrast. Five major law schools (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern) produced all 9 current U.S. Supreme Court justices. But of the approx. 300 state justices I could get info for, only 36 attended any of those schools.
Most state justices are graduates of law schools from within their state, and not always nationally known law schools within their state either. (None of Connecticut's justices went to Yale, nor any of Illinois' to Northwestern. Nor do the other major law schools listed above dominate their states' supreme courts.) In a couple smaller states, all the justices are graduates of the same state university law school (South Dakota and Wyoming).
Fourteen states have female chief justices. All but four of the others have female associate justices. Couldn't count the blacks or other minorities because not all the bios say nor do all the sites have photos.
I got my info from each court's official site on the Web.
Most states call their final court of appeals the Supreme Court. A few use variants like "Supreme Judicial Court" (Massachusetts and some others) or "Supreme Court of Appeals" (West Virginia). Two states don't use "supreme" and just call it the Court of Appeals (Maryland and New York). Confusingly, New York calls its lower level of appeals courts collectively the Supreme Court. (That I already knew.)
In two states, the Supreme Court doesn't hear criminal appeals: there's a separate court for that (Oklahoma and Texas).
Most states have 7 justices. Sixteen states, mostly small ones, have 5. Only five have 9, as the U.S. Supreme Court does (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington).
Three states are so pissant they don't have biographies of the justices on the web site (Arkansas, Rhode Island, and Virginia).
But we can still generalize. Here's a contrast. Five major law schools (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern) produced all 9 current U.S. Supreme Court justices. But of the approx. 300 state justices I could get info for, only 36 attended any of those schools.
Most state justices are graduates of law schools from within their state, and not always nationally known law schools within their state either. (None of Connecticut's justices went to Yale, nor any of Illinois' to Northwestern. Nor do the other major law schools listed above dominate their states' supreme courts.) In a couple smaller states, all the justices are graduates of the same state university law school (South Dakota and Wyoming).
Fourteen states have female chief justices. All but four of the others have female associate justices. Couldn't count the blacks or other minorities because not all the bios say nor do all the sites have photos.