Replacing the SCOTUS with prediction markets

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) serves as the ultimate authority for interpreting the Constitution and shaping the United States’ legal landscape. 

With 350 million Americans living under its rulings, its decisions carry immense weight.

Yet, the Court hears only a small fraction of the cases sent to it annually. 

Of the thousands of petitions submitted, it’s often that only around 1% are granted a hearing. 

This is a problem.

As this backlog grows, justice gets delayed, and important legal questions—things that actually matter to millions of people—go unanswered.

What do you do when the highest court in the land doesn’t have time for you?

Markets Can Give Opinions

Well, what if we just let the market decide?

Markets, as we know, are good at figuring things out. Sports betting markets tell you, with unsettling accuracy, who’s going to win the Super Bowl before it happens.

But betting markets can be had on more than just sports.

A form of betting markets called prediction markets can tell you who’s going to win elections, who’s getting cast as the next James Bond, and whether Fort Knox has leased out all their gold or not.

The reason they work is simple:

People put money on the line when they make these predictions, and people really don’t like losing money.

So let’s apply this powerful idea of betting on beliefs to the SCOTUS.

The Idea

Instead of waiting for nine justices with lifetime appointments to get around to important cases, we could create a Supreme Court Prediction Market.

Every potential case gets a market, and people bet on the likely ruling.

YES: The case is ruled constitutional.

NO: The case is ruled unconstitutional.

If the market is sufficiently confident—say, 96% of people are betting on unconstitutionality—then great! That’s the ruling.

The Supreme Court doesn’t even need to weigh in. They can just use the markets prediction in lieu of their own ruling.

If it’s a close call in the prediction markets, like 50/50 or even 48/52, then the case could go to the actual Supreme Court queue for their official review and ruling.

The Betting Justices

Of course, in this set up we would still need the Supreme Court. It can’t all be markets.

But SCOTUS would now serve as the backstop, a kind of regulatory body ensuring the system doesn’t go off the rails.

They’d still take some cases, maybe the same 1% that they take now.

But their rulings would serve as the ultimate check, overriding the market where necessary, and markets would have the power to decide the rest.

So instead of nine justices hearing just dozens of cases a year, we’d have millions of people weighing in on thousands of cases, with actual money riding on the outcome.

And if you think this sounds ridiculous, remember that this already happens.

Wall Street traders do this every day with interest rates, lawsuits, and corporate earnings.

Sports bettors do it every day with the NFL, World Cup, and NBA.

Why not let the market do some of the work for SCOTUS?

The Incentives

The beauty of this system is that it aligns incentives.

Right now, important legal decisions affecting the nation are subject to the time constraints and availability of the SCOTUS.

Market participants don’t face those same constraints. They face the most important constraint of all: reality.

If you make bad predictions, you lose money. If you make good ones, you get rewarded. That’s it.

In a way, this is how the Court already works.

Justices don’t wake up each morning and spin a wheel to decide how they’ll vote.

Their rulings follow legal precedent, their established judicial philosophies, and—if we’re being honest—what their clerks tell them.

That’s why most Supreme Court decisions are, at least in theory, predictable.

The market would just put that predictability to use by making their predictions the official law of the land.

The Future of Law

This wouldn’t replace the Supreme Court, exactly.

But it would make it faster, more efficient, and—ironically—more democratic.

If we trust markets to decide the price of Apple stock, maybe we can trust them to decide whether a law is constitutional.

And if nothing else, it would be more fun.

Imagine checking your SCOTUS portfolio, seeing that you went long on "Capital Punishment Ruled Unconstitutional" and made a killing.

That’s democracy in action.

Or, at the very least, it’s more entertaining than waiting years for a decision that may never come.