Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently criticized her colleagues in sharp terms, accusing the Court of bending the rules in ways that consistently favor President Donald Trump and his administration. In her dissent in a case involving the Trump administration’s efforts to cut funding for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants, Jackson said the Court was engaging in what she called “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist.”
The reference comes from the well-known comic strip *Calvin and Hobbes*. In that strip, Calvinball is a game where the rules are constantly changing, and no one can ever play the same way twice. By invoking this metaphor, Jackson was suggesting that the Court is not following clear or consistent principles. Instead, she argued, the majority is making up new rules as it goes along, and in this version of the game, she said, “this Administration always wins.”
Her dissent emphasized the seriousness of the decision, warning that the Court’s ruling was not just a technical matter but something with “real consequences, for the law and for the public.” She expressed concern that critical research could be disrupted by the Court’s willingness to side with the executive branch. At the same time, she held out a slim hope that ongoing studies and legal challenges might continue long enough for the Court to reconsider its stance in the future.
Jackson’s words also highlighted subtle divisions among the Court’s Democratic appointees. While she, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan all joined Chief Justice John Roberts in a minority opinion against the Trump administration, Jackson went further by writing her own separate dissent. Sotomayor and Kagan did not sign onto some of her sharper language, showing that even within the Court’s liberal bloc there are different approaches to how forcefully they should call out the majority.
Her choice of metaphor and her strongly worded dissent underline a larger concern: that the Court is increasingly tilting its decisions toward the executive branch in ways that could reshape the balance of power between the presidency and other institutions of government. For Jackson, the issue goes beyond just one NIH funding case—it’s about whether the rule of law remains stable and fair, or whether it is becoming a shifting game where one side always comes out on top.
