Do the math and split the circuit

Adding to the long-running debate about reorganizing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a Vanderbilt Law School professor argues that a circuit split would result in fewer reversals by the US Supreme Court.  In a piece published this week in the Los Angeles Times, Brian Fitzpatrick bases his claim not on ideology or administrative efficiency, but on mathematics and probability.

In the recently-completed term, the Supreme Court reviewed 22 cases from the Ninth Circuit, and reversed or vacated 19 of them.

See our earlier coverage of proposals to split the circuit here.