Wayyyyyyy kool: FantasyJustice predicted the long-shot appointment of Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court!

“On November 20th, less than two weeks after the election, FantasyJustice predicted the Gorsuch appointment,” wrote our colleague, Michael Bommarito on the LexPredict blog. “And except for a few brief hours on November 23rd, Gorsuch never fell from that lead. In fact, his margin continued to grow right up to the announcement at 8PM last night. Our not-for-money crowd prediction results are shown in the figure below, beginning on November 14th and running up through the night of January 31st.”  (Image: LexPredict blog.)

“In the end, our process not only got the right answer, but it also did so incredibly quickly. Our crowd of interested parties, many of whom are the “experts” discussed above, provided nearly 4000 opinions without any offer of reward or compensation. The results of the poll were public and transparent from day one, and we’ll be publishing detailed vote logs (including IP) in the near future,” writes Bommarito.

“The moral of the story? The golden era of ‘the cult of the expert’ is over. We are armed with science, and with the judgment of whole groups of people and technology. We can now do much better than simple reliance on one person’s gut instinct.”

Hat Tip: Daniel Martin Katz

Read more:
• Lex Predict Blog post here.
• Judge Neil M. Corsuch
• Josh Blackman’s Blog: #FantasyJustice-Judge Corsuch is On Top #SCOTUS
• The Economist: Predicting Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court.

Monica Bay is a CodeX Fellow and a freelance journalist. She is a member of the California bar. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay.

Leaderboard image: FantasyJustice
Gorsuch image: Wikipedia
Cover image: Clipart.com