I didn’t suffer through the three-hour oral argument, but Maggie Gallagher and Dale Carpenter (who are on opposite sides of the broader battle over same-sex marriage) evidently did, and they have the same read. In Gallagher’s summary: “The California court will vote to uphold Prop. 8 and decline to apply it retrospectively.”

I think that the latter ruling would be wrong—or, more precisely, as I explained in the final two paragraphs of this post, I think that all the talk about retroactivity (or retrospectivity) is badly confused and misplaced—but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the prediction turns out to be accurate.