Now that the Court is one-third of the way through its 2007 term and has rendered four (4) months’ worth of Opinions, SCOKYBLOG has pulled out its “Rosetta Stone” and prepared an up-to-date scorecard of our best guess as to the authorship of the Opinions rendered thus far.

Excluding the eighteen (18) Opinions rendered in Workers’ Compensation cases, which SCOKYBLOG believes were primarily authored by one or more SCOKY staff attorneys rather than coming from any individual Justice’s chambers, there have been a total of forty-nine (49) Opinions rendered since January. Only sixteen (16) of those Opinions identify their authors, and thus there have been thirty-three (33) unsigned opinions authored by one of the Justices.

SCOKYBLOG freely admits that determining (some might call it “guessing”) which Justices wrote which not-to-be-published Memorandum Opinions of the Court is a considerably-less-than-scientific process. In fact, if we’re correct even two-thirds of the time, we’d be ecstatic. It’s a little bit like fingerprint identification in that we know that certain Justices are fairly consistent in their use of certain formatting (indenting, footnoted citations, etc.) that we can usually make a reasonably educated guess about which of them wrote a particular Opinion. It’s the “fairly” part of being “fairly consistent” that makes it maddening. Occasionally, especially in short Opinions, the “points of comparison” are few, and our guess is less “reasonably educated” than in other situations. In large part, the whole identification process rests on the assumption that Justices’ writing styles are generally consistent from published to unpublished cases. Sometimes, that’s just not the case. Justices’ writing styles evolve. Different law clerks may have done the drafting, and they may have their own quirks that make perfect identifications difficult. In the end, however, SCOKYBLOG made the decision that – since this exercise is really just for fun anyway – we’d make our best guess unless we were totally at a loss, which was the case only as to Giancola v. Commonwealth (#55) (most likely either Justice McAnulty or Justice Schroder, but so much of a hodge-podge of both that to pick either would be a totally blind guess)

So, with that extensive disclaimer, here are our calculations of the Justices’ Opinion-output statistics through the April Court Conference Week. The number in parentheses after each case is the number assigned to it by the SCOKY’s Clerk’s Office that appears on the Minutes.

Justice Cunningham

Although SCOKYBLOG believes it highly likely that we’ve given some other Justice credit for one or more of Justice Cunningham’s Opinions, which leave the least-identifiable fingerprint, our statistics show him with the 1 to-be-published Opinion that bears his name, 1 other Memorandum Opinion, and 1 Separate Opinion, for a total of 4 Opinions:

Stone v. Commonwealth (#33) (identified)

Gadd v. Commonwealth (#37)

Separate Opinion in Williams v. Commonwealth (#49)

Cook v. Commonwealth (#59)

Chief Justice Lambert

SCOKYBLOG’s statistics credit El Jefe with 4 to-be-published Opinions that identify him as the author and 5 Memorandum Opinions, for a total of 9 Opinions:

Geary v. Commonwealth (#18)

Wallace v. Commonwealth (#22)

Brooks v. Commonwealth (#30) (identified)

Heard v. Commonwealth (#31) (identified)

Monk v. Commonwealth (#35)

Hammond v. Foellger (#38)

Wyatt v. Commonwealth (#51) (identified)

Holt v. Commonwealth (#52) (identified)

Walker v. Judicial Conduct Commission (#53)

Justice McAnulty

SCOKYBLOG is still training its collective eye to spot Justice McAnulty’s work, so our confidence is less than high that our numbers are on target. Our statistics credit Justice McAnulty with the 1 published Opinion identifying him as its author, 4 Memorandum Opinions, and 2 Separate Opinions, for a total of 7 Opinions:

Warren v. Commonwealth (#20)

Bridgewater v. Commonwealth (#34)

Separate Opinion in Monk v. Commonwealth (#35)

Separate Opinion in Buckman v. Commonwealth (#45)

Williams v. Commonwealth (#49) (identified)

Gaines v. Commonwealth (#54)

Bowling v. Commonwealth (#66)

Justice Minton

SCOKYBLOG credits Justice Minton with the 2 to-be-published Opinions bearing his name and 9 Memorandum Opinions (a number that seems a bit high, although Justice Minton has one of the more distinctive styles), for a total of 11 Opinions.

Cumberland Valley Contractors, Inc. v. Bell County Coal Corporation (#2) (identified)

Trowell v. Commonwealth (#4)

Turley v. Commonwealth (#7)

Schmidt v. Leppert (#12) (identified)

Simeon v. Commonwealth (#17)

Litton v. Commonwealth (#19)

Martin County Coal Corp. v. Sparks (#28)

Morman v. Commonwealth (#29)

Hudson v. Commonwealth (#39)

Minton v. Commonwealth (#58)

Farris v. Commonwealth (#60)

Justice Noble

SCOKYBLOG credits Justice Noble with the 2 published Opinions bearing her name and 4 Memorandum Opinions, for a total of 6 Opinions:

Patterson v. Commonwealth (#21)

Buckman v. Commonwealth (#45)

Woodard v. Commonwealth / Franklin v. Commonwealth (#47) (identified)

Autry v. WKU / WKU Student Life Foundation v. Autry (#50) (identified)

Brock v. Commonwealth (#57)

Penley v. Commonwealth (#67)

Justice Schroder

With an confessed low degree of confidence in their accuracy in pinpointing Justice Schroder’s work, SCOKYBLOG credits Justice Schroder with the 2 published Opinions bearing his name, 3 Memorandum Opinions, and 2 Separate Opinions, for a total of 7 Opinions:

Separate Opinion in Ross v. Threave Main Stud (#9)

Hinkle v. Commonwealth (#11)

Separate Opinion in Geary v. Commonwealth (#18)

Daniels v. Commonwealth (#23)

Reece v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. (#32) (identified)

Commonwealth v. Perry (#46) (identified)

Toll v. Commonwealth (#56)

Justice Scott

SCOKYBLOG credits Justice Scott with the 4 published Opinions bearing his name, 5 Memorandum Opinions, and 1 Separate Opinion, for a total of 10 Opinions:

Cain v. Abramson (#1) (identified)

Stratton v. Commonwealth (#3)

Morningstar v. Commonwealth (#5)

Raney v. Commonwealth (#6)

Commonwealth v. McKenzie (#14) (identified)

Commonwealth v. York (#15) (identified)

Goins v. Commonwealth (#24)

Hill v. Commonwealth (#36)

Fields v. Commonwealth (#48) (identified)

Separate Opinion in Holt v. Commonwealth (#52)

Even setting aside the potential problems with the statistics themselves, what they mean is anyone’s guess. Even if Justice Minton (11), Justice Scott (10), and Chief Justice Lambert (9) are actually the “top three” in terms of Opinions rendered at this point, that would not necessarily mean that they are the workhorses of the Court. Other Justices may have produced as many or even more draft Opinions by this point, but still be waiting on concurring or dissenting Opinions before the Court can officially render those Opinions.