Abstract
The dominance of one state within a federal judicial circuit, or one district within that state, might affect development of the law of the circuit, because cases coming from that state or that district could serve to define the legal rule on an important issue for the circuit as a whole. In this article, we examine such a distribution of cases, by state and district, within the Seventh Circuit, with special attention to cases from the U.S. district courts in Illinois and particularly to those from the Northern District of Illinois. In particular, we look at appellate caseload filings; published and unpublished dispositions; en banc rulings and cases with dissents from denials of en banc rehearing; and Supreme Court rulings. The relative dominance of this state and district would be compared with the relative dominance of individual states and districts in several other circuits, including the Second Circuit, where New York, and the Southern District of New York, are dominant, and Ninth Circuit, where California is clearly the dominant state.
Recommended Citation
Jolly A. Emrey & Stephen L. Wasby,
State Dominance of a Circuit: An Exploration,
32
S. Ill. U. L.J.
545
(2008).
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/siulj/vol32/iss3/5