Of predictions, bias and opinions

I know, I know, I am not a law professor.But the new essay about liberal law professors and the anti-mandate argument in the Obamacare cases, cited here, has me wondering whether one can really say one is biased because one predicts something and the opposite occurs. Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends upon the circumstances and what is being said, and what is being predicted, as Andrew Koppelman, a liberal minded law prof from Northwestern University law school, wrote in the first linked post.While I haven't read David Hyman's essay castigating liberal law professors and their supposed herd mentality, I would like to take myself as an analogy to a law professor. I wrote a post early in the litigation against Obamacare ripping into Ilya Solmin's anti-insurance mandate arguments, but then agreed with him that despite my finding his anti-mandate arguments to be ridiculous, I believed the Obamacare case was going to be a 5-4 decision at the Supreme Court level. Initially, I thought Justice Kennedy was going to reject the anti-mandate arguments and join with the not-conservatives (Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor).Then, right after oral arguments on the Obamacare case in March 2012, I began to change my mind about the state of mind of Justice Kennedy. I began to openly wonder if the mandate would be struck down as Justice Kennedy joined the Four Horsemen of the Conservative Apocalypse. See here. I believed then the anti-mandate arguments were silly, and I believe that now (I don't like the mandate policy from a policy making standpoint, as I'd rather see Medicare for All. I do, however, believe it is eminently constitutional.). However, politically, I was always ready to concede we live in silly times and that the US Supreme Court consists of justices who are part of the silliness--and therefore at least four of the Supreme Court justices would take seriously the anti-mandate arguments. It turned out to be five...That's a bias I suppose. But I stand by my opinion on the lack of merits of the anti-mandate arguments. And I look pretty good in my predictions, though not perfect by any means. For example, most people, whether law professors or political commentators, did not see the Chief Justice Roberts "pro-tax argument to uphold Obamacare" coming down the legal pike...Notwithstanding the above, if some liberal law professor predicted all nine Justices would vote to uphold the insurance mandate as constitutional, I'd say that person gets the Dick Morris Award.
Source:http://mitchellfreedman.blogspot.com/2013/04/of-predictions-bias-and-opinions.html

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