Today, we’re continuing our multi-part series on the soon-to-conclude tenure on the Court of Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar.

We begin this time with a review of Justice Cuéllar’s votes.  To simplify our numbers (and since it’s the smallest portion of the docket), we disregard the certified question appeals where the Court’s holding was something other than “affirmed,” “reversed” or “affirmed in part, reversed in part.”  However, in writ cases, we assume that “denied” signifies approval of the underlying ruling and thus count it as a vote to affirm and that “granted” or “vacated” signifies disapproval and count that as a vote to reverse.

Since joining the Court, Justice Cuéllar has vote to affirm in 80 civil cases: 18 in 2017, 16 in 2016, 15 in 2018, down to a low of 6 each year in 2020 and 2021.  He has cast a split vote – affirm in part, reverse in part – 17 times, ranging from a high of 5 in 2017 and 4 in 2018 down to zero this year.  He has voted to reverse in 104 civil cases.  Justice Cuéllar’s busiest year was 2016 and 2019, when he voted to reverse 18 times.  He cast 17 reverse votes in 2020 and 16 in 2017, ranging down to lows of 10 in 2018 and 2021.  The only two years in which he voted to affirm more than to reverse were 2017 (18-16) and 2018 (15-10).

Justice Cuéllar has voted to affirm in 146 criminal cases.  He has cast a split vote 44 times and has voted to reverse in 102 cases.

Justice Cuéllar’s busiest year for affirmances was 2018 with 33.  There were 22 affirm votes in 2016, 20 per year in 2019 and 2020 and only 15 so far this year.  Justice Cuéllar filed 12 concurrences in 2016 and 8 each in 2015 and 2019.  He has filed only 3 this year.  Justice Cuéllar’s busiest years for dissents were 2016 and 2017 with 18 each.  He dissented in 17 cases in 2020, 13 in 2019 and only 12 in 2015, 2018 and 2021.

Join us back here tomorrow as we continue our series.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Becky Matsubara (no changes).