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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

High court's high ranking due to both bench and bar

As has been previously reported, a recent University of California-Davis law review study shows that the Minnesota Supreme Court ranks fifth in the nation among state high courts that are followed by other courts. The study analyzed each state's Supreme Court opinions back to 1940, some 24,000 rulings. The full text is available here.

Responding to the reports at a panel discussion with students at the University of St. Thomas School of Law yesterday, Chief Justice Russell Anderson said he was proud, but not surprised, at the study’s findings. The court’s opinions are often followed because the court is not result-oriented, he said. “We [want] reasoned, rational decisions explaining how we got [to our conclusions],” he said.

Justice Helen Meyer also attributed the study’s results to the high level of practice before the court. “It’s also because we have a great bar,” she said.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is anyone familiar with collections, blogs or commentary on what the Minnesota Supreme Court Justices' writings entail prior to taking the bench? What types of cases were they involved in? Who were their clients, etc. . .