Fantasy SCOTUS

Fantasy SCOTUS: Predictions for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

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Ed. note: ATL has teamed up with FantasySCOTUS, the premier Supreme Court fantasy league. (For more background, check out this WSJ Law Blog post.) On Fridays, the 10th Justice will analyze league voting to predict how the Supreme Court may decide upcoming cases. This is the 10th Justice’s first post on ATL.
Welcome to the first installment of Predictions of the 10th Justice, brought to you by FantasySCOTUS.net. The league has over 1,300 members, who have made predictions on all cases currently pending before the Supreme Court. In this feature, we analyze these predictions, and try to explain how the Supreme Court will resolve top cases.
The first case we’ll look at is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, commonly known as the Hillary Movie case. This case is a showdown between free speech and campaign finance laws.


In 2008, the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the FEC that Hillary: The Movie could not be shown on television right before the 2008 Democratic primaries under the McCain-Feingold Act.
Out of 286 predictions, 192 members (67%) predicted that the Supreme Court will likely reverse that decision, and 94 members (33%) predicted that the Court will affirm the lower court’s decision.

Next we will explore the decision vote distributions and how the Justices will vote.

On this bar graph, the 9-0 and 8-1 Affirm splits each garnered less than 5 votes, along with 7-2, 8-1, and 9-0 Reverse. This graph reinforces the predicted outcome from the first chart. Most members are predicting a 5-4 Reverse, while those predicting an Affirm were more moderately split, slightly favoring a 5-4 split over a 6-3 split. Overall, the 10th Justice predicts a 5-4 decision reversing the lower courts holding.
How will each Justice vote? Predictions at The 10th Justice.

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