The Mason Spirit

The U.S. Supreme Court

Take away the beer-soaked jerseys, pork rinds (well, maybe), and all-night draft parties from fantasy football and what are you left with? How about fantasy Supreme Court.

A year ago, Mason law school graduate Josh Blackman, JD ’09, launched an online game that lets players predict how the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices will rule on cases in front of them.

The web site is called FantasySCOTUS.net and the rules are simple. Players, who are referred to as “Associate Justices,” predict three things: the outcome of a case, the vote (i.e. 5-4, 6-3 etc.), and how each justice will rule. After a term concludes, the player who racks up the most points is anointed “Chief Justice of the Fantasy Supreme Court League.”

Blackman, who teaches at Pennsylvania State University’s Dickinson School of Law, told Reason magazine that the game has already attracted nearly 5,000 players.

“The vast majority are law students. The rest are an amalgam of law professors, practicing attorneys, political junkies, people who just love the Court,” he told the magazine for its October edition, adding that several players are “soon-to-be Supreme Court clerks.”

The inaugural season was won by a University of Chicago law school graduate and a former clerk for a U.S. court of appeals. Besides earning the title “Chief Justice” of the league, Blackman also sent the player a golden gavel.

The next season of FantasySCOTUS kicks off October 4.