Abstract
The Arizona Supreme Court issues a below-average number of dissenting opinions compared to other state supreme courts. This seeks to answer how rare these decisions are, why they are so uncommon, and whether the 2016 expansion of the Arizona Supreme Court from 5 to 7 members will decrease the ability of the court to issue unanimous decisions. The article examines the court under the last Chief Justice to preside over a 5-member court; Rebecca Berch (2009-2014). It examines dissenting opinions through two frameworks: ideology and salience. Two metrics are used to determine salience; citations and newspaper coverage. The paper concludes that there is an ideological division present in cases with split decisions, but that these cases are not statistically salient. In fact, they were less likely then unanimous decisions to be cited as precedence or receive front-page newspaper coverage.
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