The Many Saliences of Justice Michael D. Ryan: A Comparative Empirical Analysis of Concepts of Salience as Applied in State Appellate Courts

This Essay began as an effort to honor the work of the late Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael D. Ryan by examining the impact of his work on Arizona law through the lens of his “most important” opinions. As with all things touched by Justice Ryan it has become something greater than its initial purpose. The Author began this project by surveying three hundred seven Arizona judges about Justice Ryan’s published opinions. The results of this survey were quite surprising. Rather than identifying a common core of important opinions, the survey identified two mutually exclusive sets of important opinions: one for the appellate court and the other for the trial court. In an effort to understand this result, the Author reviewed the salience literature (which identifies measures of case or issue importance) and identified fourteen measures of salience. The application of those measures to Justice Ryan’s published opinions only confirmed the results of the survey because no two measures identified the same set (or even similar sets) of opinions as important. This empirical analysis and review of Justice Ryan’s published opinions demonstrated three things. First, Justice Ryan’s opinions matter to a wide range of people including grandparents, illegal aliens, homeowners, schoolchildren, employees, and convicted felons on death row. Second, the salience literature does not identify a single unitary concept of importance, but rather many different concepts of importance. Finally, the empirical analysis discussed herein unequivocally demonstrates that whether an opinion is important depends upon who you ask.