NCJ Number
83824
Date Published
1982
Length
15 pages
Annotation
It is not the creation of the intermediate court of appeals that has an impact on the State supreme court workload and policymaking but rather the granting of discretionary access control to that court.
Abstract
It is hypothesized that the creation of an intermediate court of appeals will reduce the workload of the supreme court of that system as well as increase the policymaking function of the supreme court; however, while creating an intermediate appellate court will relieve the supreme court of much of its duty to hear initial appeals, it will not prevent litigants from appealing further from the intermediate court to the court of last resort. The literature suggests that the creation of an intermediate court of appeals results in an increase in initial appeals, apparently because of the greater ease with which appeals can be filed in the appellate court, particularly if that court has multiple divisions regionally located. While the percentage of appeals from the intermediate court to the supreme court may remain constant (an average of about 40 percent), the absolute number arising from the increase in initial appeals eventually fills the supreme court gap in workload caused by the initial impact of reduction in initial appeals. Studies tend to indicate that reduction in supreme court workload and consequent increase in policymaking by that court is more directly related to a policy of discretionary access control to that court. A model based upon this latter hypothesis is supported with data from Arizona; however, additional work in other States is necessary to evaluate the model further. Graphic data from the Arizona study and 10 references are provided.