Something that I like to do, when discussing these issues with people, is get the other person to commit to a position, ahead of time, and go back to those comm

Something that I like to do, when discussing these issues with people, is get the other person to commit to a position, ahead of time, and go back to those comments later to see who was right. I had multiple discussions, with many commenters on hacker news, where people were way too certain about the court case, when clearly it could have gone many different ways (Thus, I agree with you that "it's tricky to guess what a judge will do during a contentious case" ).