Law Commons^™

Judicial Priorities, Bert I. Huang, Tejas N. Narechania

Faculty Scholarship

In an unprecedented move, the Illinois Supreme Court in the mid-1990s imposed hard caps on the state's appeals courts, drastically reducing the number of opinions they could publish, while also narrowing the formal criteria for opinions to qualify for publication. The high court explained that the amendment's purpose was to reduce the "avalanche of opinions emanating from [the] Appellate Court," which was causing legal research to become "unnecessarily burdensome, difficult and costly." This unusual and sudden policy shift offers the chance to observe the priorities of a common law court in its production of published opinions. The method we introduce …