Why are appeals courts reversed so often?

[LAS14]

In the post below these statistics were quoted. Does anyone know why appeals courts are reversed so, so often?

Facts from the article: "Over the past five years, the Supreme Court overturned a greater percentage of rulings from the 3rd Circuit (92.3 percent), the 6th Circuit (85.1 percent) and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit (81.8 percent) than from the 9th (77.4 percent), according to The Associated Press' analysis of statistics from the legal website Scotusblog."

Some replies point out that most appelate decisions don't go to the supreme court. But still, it seems like a crazy high percentage of reversals of those that do go to the supreme court.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11462965

[MichMan]

1. The SC only hears a very small fracton of cases

The appeals court ruling are not "reversed so often"

[LAS14]

5. I edited my post. nt

[no_hypocrisy]

2. The USSC will reverse an appellate court if it finds that the lower court

did not interpret and apply the existing law properly. It will not secondguess the facts of the trial. For example, if the appellate court did not address an appellant's argument that a new law superceded a prior law, or if the appellate court ignored a law altogether, that's reason to overrule an appellate decision.

The role of appeal is kind of like quality control, to make sure that justice is dependent upon current and existing law and that law is properly applied to the facts in dispute. The appellate court looks at the trial record and the USSC looks at the appellate court.

[flyingfysh]

3. the numbers are misleading

Most rulings are NOT appealed to the Supreme Court. And of those that are, the Supreme Court refuses to rule on most. Only a small fraction of the appealed cases get to the Supreme Court, and only then because someone on the court though there might be an issue there worth looking at more closely. Most of the rulings are NOT reversed, partly because most never get to the Supreme Court.

[LAS14]

4. I edited my post. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Those statistics don't tell the real story.

The Supreme Court accepts only a small percentage of the petitions for certiorari (discretionary review) that they receive - about 6% of the petitions filed by attorneys (pro se petitions have an even greater failure rate). https://www.supremecourtpress.com/chance_of_success.html The court accepts for review only those cases where the law is unsettled or the grounds for circuit court's ruling weren't solid. So the fact that a lot of cases are reversed when they get to the Supreme Court isn't surprising at all - they wouldn't have reached the court in the first place if they were slam-dunks.

Appellate courts that accept all appeals, like many state courts, issue reversals at a much lower rate, because there is a presumption that the trial court ruled correctly, and it is up to the appellant to show otherwise. Success on appeal in courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court is kind of a long shot for that reason.

[at140]

7. Very good informative post!

Thanks for posting.

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

8. What I think you may still be missing . . .

. . . is not simply that "most appellate cases" don't go to the Supreme Court, but that, essentially, the Court only takes cases that it wants to take. So, it stands to reason that one element of an appellate decision that would attract the Court's particular attention is the suspicion on the part of at least four Justices --i.e., the minimum number needed for a petition for certiorari to be granted, per the Court's longstanding practice -- that the case below was wrongly decided. That being the case, it only makes sense that a particularly high percentage of the cases the Court takes up are thereafter reversed.

Or, to put it another way, if the Justices for the most part thought an appellate case was correctly decided, then it is not that likely that they would grant cert to begin with, unless there existed a Circuit split that the Court wanted to resolve.

[LAS14]

10. Ah! Now that's an important insight. thanks.

[Progressive Law]

9. Those stats are misleading, just like why do District Attorneys win 99% of their cases.

It's because the SCOTUS, just like District Attorneys, pick and chose which cases to hear in the first place.

If you calculate the percentage of appellate cases that the SCOTUS overturns out of all appellate court rulings in the nation, the percentages would be much lower.

[LAS14]

11. Thanks. See my reply 10.