Earlier this year, the Institute for Judicial Studies, the publisher of JudicialReports.com, calculated the reversal rate of every Supreme Court justice (both acting and elected) in the five boroughs. The survey was based on published appellate decisions from the beginning of 2000 through the end of 2005. All rulings labeled “modified and affirmed” were treated as de facto reversals.

During the survey, criminal and civil cases were kept separate because the latter are reversed at a significantly higher rate. LexMetrics will examine civil judges at a later date.

One last note: two separate appellate divisions hear cases coming from NYC. The Second Department, which reviews the judges of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, tend to reverse more often than the First (Manhattan and the Bronx). For that reason, LexMetrics decided to compare judges only against peers reviewed by the same department. This raises the question: how can the lead story claim Price is the most reversed criminal judge in the city? Reason: Price works in the Bronx (First Department), so he was helped by the institutional bias and still had the highest reversal rate.

The five most reversed criminal judges in the First Department (minimum of ten appeals):

The five most reversed judges in the Second Department of NYC:

If Judge Ferdinand has a good year in 2006, she could move off this list fairly easily. The other judges have a healthy enough sample size that it would take considerably more than one good year.