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.”
Is the Supreme Court partisan? Although many perceive the Justices as mere political aids, do the numbers support this assertion? In this installment of 10th Justice, we will be exploring the perception that the Supreme Court Justices make their decisions based on partisan identity. For this purpose, we will be using a standardized majority ratio technique and confidence intervals to analyze Union Pacific Railroad, Salazar, Christian Legal Society, and McDonald.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS: Testing the Partisan Waters”

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.”
In this installment, we will consider which Justices will be found in the majority and which ones will be in the minority. Using the results from Citizens United, we will consider four of the biggest pending cases for this term, Quon, Christian Legal Society, McDonald, and Comstock, to show how predictions sort the Justices into majority and minority votes.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS: The Majority Shall Reign Supreme”

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.”
How large of a crowd do we need before the crowd becomes “wise”? In this week’s 10th Justice, we will be check how accurate our members predicted five cases recently handed down: Smith v. Spisak, Power Marketing, LLC v. Maine Pub. Util. Comm’n, Kucana v. Holder, South Carolina v. North Carolina, and Wood v. Allen. While these cases are not among the most important cases of the term, they still contribute important data points to test the predictive capabilities of FantasySCOTUS.net, and enables us to further understand the wisdom (and limitations) of our crowd of users. For a refresher on confidence intervals and margins of error in FantasySCOTUS.net predictions, check out last week’s column.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS: Testing the Wisdom of the Crowds”

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.”
How many SCOTUS watchers does it take to accurately predict the outcome of a case? How large of a crowd do we need before the crowd becomes “wise”? The wisdom of the crowds considers the accuracy of the collective opinion of a group, which in many cases may be more reliable than the opinion of experts. In this column, the 10th Justice tests the theory of the wisdom of the crowds. Based on the accuracy of our predictions in Citizens United v. FEC, the landmark campaign finance reform case, we will develop levels of confidence to determine how reliable our predictions are for four of the most significant cases this term.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS Predictions of the 10th Justice: How wise are the crowds?”

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.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS Predictions of the 10th Justice: Predicting Justices in the Majority and Probable Coalitions”

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.”
Hillary: The Movie did not have much impact at the box office, but it’s become quite a hit at One First Street. It’s so popular there that SCOTUS brought it back for a second showing, ordering a re-argument in the campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
The Hillary Movie 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.
Some have suggested that the case could bring down McCain-Feingold. The voters at Fantasy SCOTUS believe Justice Kennedy will swing to deliver the blow that will take it down.

Continue reading “FantasySCOTUS: Citizens United v. FEC (a.k.a. The Hillary Movie Case) Revisited”

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.

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