Supreme Court highly rated in study
Posted on Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Arkansas Supreme Court was rated highly in a study made public this month in a University of Chicago Law School working paper series based on opinions written by members of state high courts in 1998-2000.
The study, titled “Which States Have the Best (and Worst ) High Courts ?” ranked Arkansas’ court as second to California in one combination of factors it weighed as a means of evaluating the state courts.
“California comes out at the top, as it has in other academic studies,” said the study. “More surprisingly, Arkansas comes in second.”
Arkansas was cited as one of the “top contenders” for best court in the nation.
The study looked at the number of opinions the justices wrote, the number of times their opinions were cited in the rulings by judges in other states, and the independence of the judges to differ with their colleagues.
Arkansas Supreme Court justices ranked third in the number of opinions written by each justice per year.
Arkansas is a “traditionally overlooked state” that “may deserve more credit,” said the study by professor Stephen Choi of New York University Law School, professor Mitu Gulati of Duke University Law School, and professor Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School.
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