Fantasy SCOTUS

Not quite as cool as the U of Iowa Political Future Markets, but still interesting!

From Damon Root's interview with Josh Blackmun, founder of FantasySCOTUS.net. Blackman is a graduate of George Mason University Law School and a teaching fellow at Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law. Fantasy SCOTUS asks players to predict the outcome of Supreme Court decisions-- "a cousin to the thriving world of prediction markets, where participants bet on real-world outcomes in everything from elections to the Academy Awards."

Q: How does the game work?

A: Players are predicting three things. First, the result. Will the Supreme Court affirm or reverse the lower court? Second, they predict the split. Will it be 5-4, 6-3, 7-2? Then they try to predict the votes of the individual justices.

For the most part, people impute into the Supreme Court their own personal views of how the law should turn out...

Q: Tell me about the players.

A: The vast majority are law students. The rest are an amalgam of law professors, practicing attorneys, political junkies...

Q.: You found out that teachers were using it in the classroom.

A: When I launched the league in November, I started receiving emails from high school teachers all over the country telling me, "Josh, this is a great tool. I'm using it in an A.P. government class or A.P. American history class, and my students just love it."...