As the baseball season begins, it’s with some interest that I note that the Supreme Court has granted certioarai in the case of CBC Distribution v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media. This case challenges the right of a private company to use the real names and statistics of big-league baseball players in computer-moderated fantasy baseball games. CBC Distribution is the leading clearinghouse of those statistics. Three of the nine Justices on the High Court (Stevens, Breyer, and Alito) have recused themselves because they play in fantasy baseball leagues themselves. Two more (Scalia and Ginsburg) have also revealed that they play fantasy baseball, too, but do not see enough of a conflict of interest that they are recusing themselves. If they had, it would have been the only time I can think of in which a majority of Justices did not participate in deciding a case.
