Hudson

Hudson Corpus · Data briefs

Analysis you can check.

Each data brief takes one question lawyers actually argue about — which cases do the work, what changes, who regulates — and answers it from the full record: 76,725 appellate decisions, every citation between them, the Iowa Code, and the administrative rules beneath it. Figures appear where they help the argument; the method and the complete data are always on the page.

Latest · Data brief 001As of 13 Aug 2026

The Most-Cited Cases in Iowa

The fifty decisions Iowa's appellate courts cite most, counted from 475,375 citations across 76,725 decisions. The case they reach for most is not a constitutional landmark: it is In re P.L., a 2010 termination decision cited by 1,502 opinions. The full list, the chart, and how it was counted.

Family & juvenile26Criminal & postconviction21Civil & procedure3
Read the brief 1 figure · full table · method on the page

In the pipeline

Questions we’re preparing to answer next. A brief publishes when its numbers survive review — each arrives frozen, with an as-of date and its method on the page.

  • —Anatomy of authorityDepth, breadth, position and lifecycle for the fifty most-cited cases — in review.
  • Brief 002Which parts of the Iowa Code change most?Legislative churn by Code title across the 2019–2026 sessions, from 18,723 mapped act-to-Code edges.
  • Brief 003The half-life of Iowa precedentHow quickly do cited cases age out? The age of every citation in the graph, decade by decade.
  • Brief 004Who really regulates Iowa?Statute-to-rule coupling by agency: 22,508 links between the Code and 17,690 administrative rules.
  • Brief 005Court output over timeOpinions per year, Supreme Court vs. Court of Appeals — pending a check on pre-2008 unpublished-opinion coverage.
  • —The most-overruled casesWaiting on citation-treatment analysis across the graph.
  • —The growth of the Iowa CodeWaiting on more historical Code editions in the corpus.

What a data brief is

An argument, not a dashboard

Each brief is a curated piece of analysis with a point of view, frozen when published. No live filters, no drifting numbers — the product is the dashboard; the brief is the argument.

The method is on the page

Every brief ends with how it was measured and the fine print, and every figure ships with its full data table. If a caveat would embarrass us later, it goes on the page now.

Frozen and citable

A published brief carries an as-of date and never drifts as the corpus grows. Refreshing one is a deliberate re-export, reviewed line by line.