April 7, 2011 5:14PM # Predicting the Supreme Court By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE [Josh Blackman](http://www.joshblackman.com/), my sometimes co-author, who is the president of the [Harlan Institute](http://harlaninstitute.org/) (with which I too am associated) and czar — his title, not mine — of [Fan​ta​sySCO​TUS​.net](http://fantasyscotus.net/), has co-authored a fascinating [article](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804940) 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 Fan​ta​sySCO​TUS​.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](http://www.fantasyscotus.net/prediction-tracker.php) to provide real-time predictions as to how the Supreme Court will decide. Josh’s [article](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804940) 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. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).