“Calvinball” Enshrined in Jurisprudence-Speak
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If you ever wanted to appear smarter by referencing Supreme Court decisions in your conversations, you can now drop the word “Calvinball” and be fluent in American jurisprudence speak thanks to an dissenting opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In a ruling earlier today, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Trump Administration could cancel grants to the National Institutes of Health for programs it deemed supportive of diversity, equity and inclusion. The ruling did not sit well with Justice Jackson who critiqued the court for seemly making things up as it was going. On page 17 of her dissent she wrote:
In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. Id., at _ (J ACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 21). This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.6 We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.7
Emphasis added
“Cavlinball” was a game Bill Watterson introduced in the May 5, 1990 daily comic Calvin and Hobbes and was often used later throughout the strip’s run.
So go ahead. Weave “en banc“, “nolo contendere”, “Calvinball”, and “voir dire” into your conversations to appear smarter.
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