Josh Blackman, my sometimes co-author, who is the president of the Harlan Institute (with which I too am associated) and czar — his title, not mine — of FantasySCOTUS.net, has co-authored a fascinating article that analyzes an information market he created to predict Supreme Court cases.
During the October 2009 Supreme Court term (last year), the 5,000 members of FantasySCOTUS.net made over 11,000 predictions for the 81 cases decided. Based on this data, FantasySCOTUS accurately predicted a majority of the cases and the top-ranked experts predicted over 75% of the cases correctly. FantasySCOTUS even has a Prediction Tracker to provide real-time predictions as to how the Supreme Court will decide.
Josh’s article is an absolute must-read for anyone who follows the Court closely and tries to figure out what “The Nine” will do. While I myself haven’t had the time to participate in FantasySCOTUS, perhaps I should go there every now and again to be better able to answer (the very common) media questions of how cases turn out.
