Fantasy SCOTUS

FantasySCOTUS Predictions of the 10th Justice: Predicting Justices in the Majority and Probable Coalitions

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Ed. note: ATL has teamed up with the 10th Justice to predict how the Supreme Court may decide upcoming cases. CNN has called FantasySCOTUS the “hottest new fantasy-league game.”

Welcome to the sixth installment of Predictions of the 10th Justice, brought to you by FantasySCOTUS.net. The league has over 3,400 members, who have made predictions on all cases currently pending before the Supreme Court.

By conducting a rigorous statistical analysis of 26 of the most hotly contested cases this Term, we have developed a descriptive model to elucidate how frequently a Justice will vote in the majority, and how this affects the building of majority coalitions on the Court. Additionally, these statistics paint a picture of how Justice Sotomayor, the newest addition to the Court, will vote, and which coalitions she will join. Finally, this analysis aims to answer the elusive question of how often Justice Kennedy will be in the majority.

We first calculated the percentage of predictions placing each Justice in the majority. While this method overlooks whether the Court will affirm or reverse the lower court, it does serve as an indicator for which Justices are better at forming coalitions. Specifically, for the 26 cases we considered, we calculated four data points for each Justice:

1. Minimum – The case where the lowest percentage of predictions placed that Justice in the Majority.
2. Maximum – The case where the highest percentage of predictions placed that Justice in the Majority.
3. Median – The odds of the justice being in the majority of the median case.
4. Mean – The odds of the justice being in the majority of the average case.

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Predictions, of the 10th Justice, available here.

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