FantasySCOTUS

Monday, June 28, 2010 will be a day that will lives in SCOTUS fame for quite some time. At 10 a.m., the Supreme Court will hand down the remaining opinions in Bilski v. Kappos, Free Enterprise Fund and Beckstead and Watts, LLP v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, and most importantly McDonald v. City of Chicago. Across the street at 12:30 p.m., Elena Kagan will begin her confirmation hearing. Supreme Court overload.

In this post, we provide final predictions for those four huge cases. Additionally, we will provide an overview of how accurate FantasySCOTUS predictions were for the cases decided in June, including Stop The Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, City of Ontario v. Quon, New Process Steel v. National Labor Relations Board, and Doe v. Reed.

In Free Enterprise Fund, 67% predict the Supreme Court will affirm, and find that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s creation of accounting review board is constitutional. Based on the statistics, it looks it will be a unanimous decision. In Bilski 78% of our members are predicting that the Supreme Court will affirm the Federal Circuit. However, this seems to be one of the more lopsided contests, and the Justices are much more likely to be unanimous in this case than in Free Enterprise Fund. As I predicted, based on opinion assignments, Justice Stevens will likely write this one.

Predictions for McDonald and CLS after the jump at JoshBlackman.com.

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With Kagan’s nomination set and the all oral arguments for the October 2009 Term completed, we are still waiting for some major decisions—specifically, McDonald v. Chicago, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, Free Enterprise v. PCAOB, Bilski v. Kappos, and Doe v. Reed. In this post, we will offer predictions for these huge cases. Additionally, our statistics might also give us an insight into what is causing the delay within the SCOTUS on handing down these opinions.

The chart contains the outcome of the predictions, the confidence interval for the outcome, and the SMRs for each justice, along with the SMR’s confidence interval.

United States v. Stevens considered the constitutionality of a statute banning depictions of animal cruelty. Out of over 600 predictions, over 83% of the members corrected predicted that the Supreme Court would affirm the Third Circuit’s opinion. Specifically, 98 users, representing 15% of the total predictions, correctly guess that the split would be 8-1. With only Justice Alito dissenting, this was an unusual split.

While the predictions for affirmation were clear, the users by no means indicated that the decision would be unanimous. Looking at the SMRs, the real question for users was whether or not the conservative Justices would take the expanded view of 1st Amendment speech over a law and order viewpoint. The liberal justices were considered highly likely to join the majority, with SMRs all above 4, while the conservative Justices were all significantly below 1. However, the users predicted that the holdout tendency would be weak among Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas, but strong for Alito. In this sense, our data forecasted that Alito would be the sole disenter. And in light of the 8-1 split, our data was accurate.

For more results, read on at JoshBlackman.com.

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Who will replace Justice John Paul Stevens? While pundits, savants, and oracles across the SCOTUSphere pontificate and read Article III tea leaves, FantasySCOTUS.net conducted extensive and detailed polling to predict the next Justice. We have invited our nearly 5,000 members–who represent some of the closest and most ardent Court watchers–to weigh in on the vacancy, rank the candidates on the short list, and give their views on the potential nominees. We are still collecting data. Sign up for free at www.fantasyscotus.net and voice your opinion. This is the fourth in a series of posts breaking down this data, as we attempt to add some certainty to the vast amounts of uncertainty emanating from the penumbras of the upcoming vacancy.

As the Supreme Court has closed off the front doors at One First Street, it is time for us to close the page on speculation of who will take John Paul Stevens’ seat on the highest court. In this post, we will be comparing the numbers from our initial post on April 15 with our most recent data. Over the past month, we have received more votes, and our sample size has increased by almost 30%.

And the data shows, Elena Kagan FTW!!

In this post, we will be comparing the initial numbers for each candidate in the areas of favorability (on a scale of -10 to 10), and the percentage which they were picked as the top nominee, followed by their current favorability and top nominee percentages, and the favorability and top picks for the votes added since April 15.

Interestingly, many users changed their votes. Why did their votes change? And do we yield a different results? These bench marks are important to see whether or not the media frenzy in the intervening period has a substantial effect on the predictions. The results, after the jump at JoshBlackman.com.

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Who will replace Justice John Paul Stevens? While pundits, savants, and oracles across the SCOTUSphere pontificate and read Article III tea leaves, FantasySCOTUS.net conducted extensive and detailed polling to predict the next Justice. We have invited our nearly 5,000 members–who represent some of the closest and most ardent Court watchers–to weigh in on the vacancy, rank the candidates on the short list, and give their views on the potential nominees. We are still collecting data. Sign up for free at www.fantasyscotus.net and voice your opinion. This is the third in a series of posts breaking down this data, as we attempt to add some certainty to the vast amounts of uncertainty emanating from the penumbras of the upcoming vacancy.

This week, we pit Elana Kagan, Diane Wood, and Merick Gerland in a head to head to head confirmation death match. By dividing users across these lines, we can tell whether a nominee is supported by users who feel strongly about that nominee, or if the nominee’s supporters just like the other candidates less. We have divided the predictions into groups based on the top three nominees: Team Kagan, Team Wood, and Team Garland. Although some users placed other nominees as the top pick, we have limited our discussion to the best three potential nominees.

In discussing the opinions of Team Kagan, Team Wood, and Team Garland, we have statistics about those opinions. In the first column we note that Team’s top pick, followed by their second pick, and third pick. We list the maximum and minimum opinions for the nominees (on a scale from -10 to 10) to give general context. We include the average opinion of the group, the standard deviation among the group, and the overall average opinion. The average opinion of the group tells us how the group generally feels about the candidate, while the standard deviation tells us how spread out opinion about that candidate is. Finally, we include the overall opinion to show how the group differs from the total predictions, and to have a better overall context.

Team Kagan

Our discussion naturally begins with those who picked Kagan. One of the easiest things to notice about the Team Kagan as a group is that they have full range of minimums and maximums for each candidate, which might be due to the fact that they are the largest and most inclusive group. However, it does indicate that predictions are not strongly tied to the opinion of the nominee. Unlike our previous post however, the average opinions do reflect the order of picks, with Kagan having the highest and Garland the lowest. At 4, Kagan is by no means the peacemaker candidate, but it does indicate that she can attract solid support. The standard deviation shows how volatile the candidate is by showing the amount of spread in the opinions. The opinion of Kagan, at 5.79, is well spread out, but less so than Wood at 6.45. This difference hints that Kagan is preferred over Wood as a less divisive nominee, while Garland fails to engender much opinion period. Finally, the difference between the average opinion and overall opinion indicates that while those who picked Kagan are the largest group, Kagan is disfavored enough by other users that there is almost an entire point of difference in the opinions.

The results for Team Garland and Team Wood, after the jump at JoshBlackman.com.

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Who will replace Justice John Paul Stevens? While pundits, savants, and oracles across the SCOTUSphere pontificate and read Article III tea leaves, FantasySCOTUS.netconducted extensive and detailed polling to predict the next Justice. We have invited our nearly 5,000 members–who represent some of the closest and most ardent Court watchers–to weigh in on the vacancy, rank the candidates on the short list, and give their views on the potential nominees. We are still collecting data. Sign up for free at www.fantasyscotus.net and voice your opinion. This is the second in a series of posts breaking down this data, as we attempt to add some certainty to the vast amounts of uncertainty emanating from the penumbras of the upcoming vacancy.

Are Elena Kagan’s liberal bona fides established, or would Diane Wood be the better progressive pick? Glenn Greenwood, among others on the left, have written sharply that Kagan is not a proper progressive pick. Others on the left have rushed to Kagan’s defense, and Greenwald has replied in kind.

In this installment, we break down the picks based on self identified ideologies; liberals, moderates, conservatives, and libertarians. Because these brackets are often difficult to define, we also polled the voter’s favorability ratings of the two most recently appointed Justices, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Alito.

For each ideology, this table lists the top pick, along with percentage making that prediction, the correlating opinion scores for Justices Sotomayor and Alito (from -10 to 10), and the top three ranked candidates, with the candidate’s score in parenthesis.

Moderates, once again, place Kagan as the top pick, with 56% of the vote. Moderates mostly have positive opinions of the possible nominees, with both Garland and Kagan rating higher than Sotomayor. Garland takes the lead with a 2.89 rating, followed by Kagan with a 2.75, and then finally Wood with 1.61. One important takeaway from the moderates is that a slightly higher opinion of a candidate may not make much of a difference in how the user predicts the likelihood of nomination.

Among libertarians, Kagan holds a plurality as the top pick at 40%. However, the other top picks are spread among the other candidates. Libertarians have a neutral opinion of Kagan, which is only slightly lower than their opinion of Sotomayor. Garland has the second highest rating of -0.55, followed by Sunstein at -0.7. Perhaps his work on libertarian paternalism with Richard Thaler lends him more support among libertarians. Overall, Kagan is still predicted most likely to get the nod, but Sunstein being third in opinion was interesting.

How do the candidates rank among liberals and conservatives? Is Glenn Greenwald right? Is Kagan appealing to liberals? The results after the jump, at JoshBlackman.com.

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It’s official. Justice Stevens will be stepping down at the end of the term. And the race begins to name Justice Stevens’s replacement. And we want to know who the replacement will be.

At FantasySCOTUS.net we call upon our 5,000 members to cast their votes, and predict who will replace Justice Stevens. And as a special JPS treat, we have waived the registration fee. Sign up now for FREE at FantasySCOTUS.net!

We have narrowed the short list to 8 possible candidates:

• Clinton
• Garland
• Kagan
• Napolitano
• Patrick
• Sullivan
• Sunstein
• Wood

Rank them, and provided your opinions for each candidate.

We will award, at random, users who correctly pick the correct justice, a to-be-determined prize, and an opportunity to rant on JoshBlackman.com about what they think about the Justice.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide 56 cases for the October 2009 term . In this installment, we will provide predictions for Bilski v. Kappos, American Needle Inc. v. NFL, Free Enterprise Fund and Beckstead and Watts, LLP v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Black v. United States, and Graham v. Florida.

American Needle considers whether the National Football League, its teams, and their licensing agent’s function as a single entity for purposes of the Sherman Act. A majority, 60% of the  members of the league are predicting an affirmance of the lower court, at a 95% confidence.  The SMRs show a tendency for the liberal justices to join with the conservatives in this decision, with Sotomayor most likely to join in the majority.

Stop the Beach considers the limits on state authority to restore storm-eroded beaches or lakefronts. Eighty-four percent of the members of the league are predicting that the Supreme Court affirms the Florida Supreme Court.  In this case, the SMRs show that there is a strong potential for a conservative objection to the majority position, with Thomas possibly being the most vocal objection. This is not a big surprise in light of Justice Thomas’ staunch defense of property rights. The liberal justices are really strong for this case. Though Stevens’ low SMR is due to the fact he has already recused himself from this decision. Though, not everyone has followed this news, and some have cast votes for Stevens.

Predictions for PCAOB, Black, Graham, and Bilski, after the jump at JoshBlackman.com.

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In order to assess the accuracy of our league, we will revisit five recent opinions, and compare the predicted outcomes with the actual outcomes. We have selected cases that did not necessarily fall along ideological lines to test the capability of our league to detect nuance in judgments. In this week’s 10th Justice, we will take a look at Hemi Group, Briscoe, Powell, Hertz Corp, and Shatzer, all of which were decided at the end of January and February. We also consider how cheating impacted the results.

For each case, we have recorded our outcome statistics and SMRs (standard majority ratio). The SMR provides a method to test whether or not users perceive the Court as dominated by conservative ideology.

In Hemi Group v. City of New York, the Supreme Court reversed the 2nd Circuit’s decision that the non-payment of taxes was an injury flowing from a third party’s actions for the purpose of the RICO Act. Overall, only 39% of total predictions found that the Supreme Court would reverse, and the confidence interval was 10.25% (at the 95% level), indicating that the results were a decently accurate representation of predictions about the case (and their general incorrectness). As for the specific split, 18 users guessed that the outcome would have less than 9 Justices voting. These members were astute, as Sotomayor recusing herself from an opinion involving the Second Circuit should have been expected. But only half of those predictions, 10% of total predictions, were reverse predictions. No member correctly predicted the votes of each Justice. The SMRs indicate that most predictions were counting on liberal Justices joining the majority, since Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer all have SMRs above one at a statistically significant level. Of course, this could also be representative of a complex case or issue, as Kennedy was in the minority for this case. This fact would also explain how the majority of predictions got the general outcome wrong.
In Briscoe v. Virginia, the Supreme Court reversed the Virginia Supreme Court’s. The Court held that a Defendant does not waive his 6th Amendment rights to the confrontation of forensic analysts who prepared forensic evident used in court by failing to call them as witnesses. 63% of predictions correctly guessed that the Supreme Court would reverse. The results were statistically significant at a 99% confidence level, with a confidence interval of 11.86. For the specific split, only 3 users, 4.6% of total predictions, predicted a unanimous outcome. These members probably correctly assumed a per curiam reversal would be issued in light of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. The SMRs further support this conclusion since the “liberal minority” all had SMRs above 1 at a statistically significant level. Sotomayor’s SMR of 2.17 indicated that she was highly likely to join in a majority decisions, and Ginsburg’s SMR of 1.71 was also a solid indicator. Overall, it is interesting to note that while predictions produced a statistically sound correct outcome, a smaller proportion of users predicted the correct split than in Hemi.
In Florida v. Powell, the Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision that held that informing a defendant that they had a right to “talk to an attorney” was insufficient to inform them they had a right to have counsel present. Overall, 51% of members predicted that the Court would reverse, but with such a tight margin, the results were not statistically significant. Only three users, approximately 2% of total predictions, predicted the correct split, while only one user predicted the correct votes. In conjunction with the indeterminate nature of the general outcome predictions, the SMRs did not reveal any additional information since all Justices had SMRs that were not significantly different from 1. This indicates that predictions mainly sorted along ideological lines.

But how did the FantasySCOTUS cheaters affect the results? This installment of the 10th Justice continues at JoshBlackman.com, after the jump.

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