United States: How Common Are Governmental Parties In The Court's Civil Docket?

For the past several weeks, we've looked at the Court's record with death penalty appeals.  This week and next, we're looking at the Court's record with parties that are governmental entities.

In Table 308, we report the year-by-year data for governmental entity petitioners, beginning in 1994.  The numbers have varied widely.  The Court decided seven cases involving governmental entity petitioners in 1994, 22 in 1995, seven in 1996 and 14 each in 1997 and 1998.  The court decided seven cases each involving governmental petitioners in 1999 and 2000, fourteen in 2001, nine in 2002, five in 2003 and nine in 2004.

The data for petitioners in the years 2005 through 2016 are reported in Table 309.  The Court decided seven cases involving governmental entity petitioners in 2005, eight in 2006 and ten in 2007.  The Court decided nine such cases in 2008, six in 2009, nine in 2010, four in 2011 and six in 2012.  The Court decided only two cases involving governmental entity petitioners in 2013 and 2014 and three in 2015, but the Court's total increased to nine in 2016.

We track the Court's year by year totals of governmental entity respondents in Table 310.  The Court decided ten cases involving governmental entities as respondents in 1994, nine in 1995, eight in 1996 and seven in 1997.  The Court decided twelve such cases in 1998, ten in 1999, seven in 2000, eight in 2001 and seven in 2002.  The Court decided a dozen cases involving governmental entity petitioners in 2003 and eleven such cases in 2004.

The Court decided nine cases involving governmental entity respondents in 2005.  That number increased to twenty-three in 2006, but was back down to ten in 2007, six in 2008 and ten in 2009.  The Court decided seven such cases each in 2010 and 2011, six in 2012 and eight in 2013.  The Court only decided three cases involving governmental entity respondents in 2014, but decided fifteen in 2015.  The Court's total was back down to five in 2016.

Join us back here tomorrow as we look at governmental entities' winning percentage in civil cases.

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