District courts do not like publishing opinions.
The other week, I posted some thoughts about unpublished opinions. This led to some interesting conversations about the value of unpublished opinions, and it sparked my curiosity about the prevalence of unpublished opinions across district courts. So, naturally, I spent a few hours poring over the data to figure out how common unpublished opinions really are.
I’ve put together a chart below. The parameters were simple: I went on Westlaw and isolated each judicial district and looked at the ratio of published vs. unpublished opinions after January 1, 2010.
Some interesting observations:
As you’ll see, D.D.C., D. Mass., and S.D. Iowa have significantly more published opinions than other districts.
Published opinions are generally more prevalent in the Eastern United States. Of the Western states, only New Mexico, Hawaii, and North Dakota exceed 10%.
As a fun fact, E.D. Mo. and W.D. Mo., as well as E.D. Okla. and W.D. Okla., have the same percentage of published opinions. State consistency!
I’ll likely unpack this data further in a later post, and I’ll also do the same analysis for the Circuit Courts. So, stay tuned!
I respectfully submit that its more accurate (and more valuable) to say that district court judges do not like writing opinions that are worthy of being published. Even they don't think many of the opinions they write are worthy of being published. That speaks volumes about the quality of judicial opinions. I have encountered many judges who issued "unpublished" opinions because they knew their own conduct (and their own purported conclusions or so-called findings) violated controlling law (and our Constitution)). Such judges knowingly "deprived" a "person" of "life, liberty, or property" without the "process of law" that they knew was "due."