Appellate Law

Ranking the States' High Courts

By D. Todd Smith

On the heels of a hotly debated study declaring that California has the top state high court (see discussion here, here, and here), another paper has reached the same conclusion.  At least this time the authors are from other states.

Neither the Texas Supreme Court  nor the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals fared particularly well.  The paper contains several different categories of data, the foundations of which are not always clear.  In a composite of all the categories, ranking a total of 52 courts (Texas and Oklahoma each have separate high courts for civil and criminal matters), SCOTX came in 39th, and the CCA came in 43rd.

Thanks to the Legal Theory Blog, via How Appealing.

Full post as published by Texas Appellate Law Blog on May 22, 2008 (boomark / email).