The workload of appellate courts is generally measured by the number of cases filed (including appeals, petitions, and motions) and disposed of during the year and by counting the number of full opinions that were written by each justice. Appeals filed in the Supreme Court totaled 548 in 1994-95, a decrease of 3% from the previous year but an increase of 6% over the last three years. The total number of appeals, petitions, and motions filed was 849, a decrease of 2% but the number of terminations increased by almost 2% to 854. The Supreme Court has a superior record for maintaining the currency of its cases. There were 251 appeals pending at the end of the fiscal year, the same as the previous year. Justices also averaged writing and publishing 61 majority opinions during the year.
It required an average of 673 days in criminal cases and 759 days in civil cases for an action to be filed in the trial court and a final decision to be reached in the Supreme Court. This marks a slight decline from the previous year. Only a very small percentage of this time, however, is spent at the appellate level. From the time a case is submitted to the Supreme Court, a decision is handed down, on average, in 17 days for criminal cases and 19 days for civil cases. These time periods, while small, have been gradually increasing over the past five years.
The Court was also very active in dealing with a myriad of administrative issues throughout the court system. With the approval of the expansion of the size of the Court of Appeals, an examination of the division of cases between the two courts was begun. The Court also responded to the work of its committees in effecting several changes in court rules and procedures. Finally, the makeup of the Court changed with the retirement of long-time Justice Steele Hays and the appointment by the Governor of Justice Andree Roaf of Pine Bluff.
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