Making the Supreme Court Fun
What do the U.S. Supreme Court and the National Football League have in common? Surprisingly enough, both have generated “fantasy leagues” in which participants try to successfully pick the winners and losers.
The work of the country’s highest court is serious business. After all, the justices are asked to address serious constitutional issues such as the right of same-sex couples to marry, as well as interpreting key statutes such as the Affordable Act (ACA). However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.
Houston lawyer Keith Jaasma’s Supreme Court Haiku site.
As highlighted in a recent Washington Post article, technology has made the Supreme Court more accessible and provided a place where Court aficionados can convene. For instance, Houston lawyer Keith Jaasma created Supreme Court Haiku, a website in which he reduces weighty legal opinions to seventeen syllables. He also tacked the Bill of Rights. His summary of last term’s ACA case read:
Birth control mandate
Corporations are “persons”
Religion burdened
Justice Ruther Bader Ginsberg also has her own fan site on Tumblr called the Notorious R.B.G. Meanwhile, Scotus Humor keeps tracks of which justices are able to elicit laughs during oral arguments. For those who may be interested, Antonin Scalia holds the leader spot.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Forward 50 from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo.
To generate interest in decisions that may not make national headlines, Clickbait Scotus uses sensationalized headlines to attract attention. Thus, a ruling on executing intellectually disabled death row inmates resulted in the following tweet: “If your IQ is 70, Florida just might try to kill you.”
For predicting the outcomes of Supreme Court cases, South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman created Fantasy Scotus, where court watchers can win $10,000 for their correct picks. Blackman estimates 25,000 players have participated since the site went online in 2009.
Scarinci Hollenbeck has its own Supreme Court blog, the Constitutional law Reporter, which provides an interactive US Constitution and updated analysis of current issues before the US Supreme Court is intended to provide educational legal insight into the U.S. Constitution and how it is interpreted in the Court’s most important decisions. You can check it out at the Constitutional Law Reporter.