Share it

UKSC Blog’s statistics department has been hard at work over the vacation and we can now present our short statistical survey of the work of the Court in its first term.  

The Court sat for 33 days out of a possible 45 – that is 11 weeks of 4 sitting days plus an interim hearing on 1 October. It heard 14 substantive appeals and two applications. Lord Hope sat on all but two of these hearings, putting in 29 sitting days.  The figures for the other justices were as follows:  Lord Phillips 16; Lord Saville 1; Lord Rodger 21; Lord Walker 13; Lady Hale 22; Lord Brown 26, Lord Mance 13; Lord Collins 15; Lord Kerr 21 and Lord Clarke 12.  The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, also sat for 2 days.  These figures do not, of course, include days sitting in the Privy Council.

The Court gave 17 judgments, 10 of which were in cases which had been heard by the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords.  In the 6 judgments given in substantive appeals which had been heard by the Supreme Court, the average time between hearing and delivery of judgment was five and a half weeks.

Of the 16 appeals which were the subject of judgments 8 were allowed and 8 were dismissed.  Of the 17 judgments given, 13 were unanimous, three included one dissent (Sigma Finance, BA (Nigeria) and Barratt Homes) and one featured a 5:4 split in a 9 judge bench (JFS).  Lady Hale dissented twice (in BA (Nigeria) and Barratt Homes) and Lord Walker also dissented twice (in Sigma Finance, Barratt Homes and JFS),  Lords Hope, Rodger and Brown each dissented once (in JFS).  

Applications for permission to appeal have not been published by the Court but have, intermittently, been released through the ICLR.  Assuming that this list is complete, there were 57 permission decisions this term, with permission being given in 17 cases (29.8%).   

Mr Benjamin Pell has helpfully provided us with the House of Lords permission statistics for the 2007 and 2008 and the joint House of Lords/Supreme Court statistics for 2009.  These are as follows:

2007
 
175  applications
  59     Permission given                  33.7%
116     Permission refused               66.3%
 
 2008
 
200   applications
  55      Permission given                 27.5%   
145     Permission refused              72.5%
 
 2009
 
149    applications
   57     Permission given                35.2%
  105    Permission refused            64.8%