Calvinball Makes the Supreme Court [pdf]

The link is to SCOTUS's August 21, 2025 order on the application for stay in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association (regarding the Trump administration's cutting of funding).

From page 17 of Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion (page 32 of the pdf) (footnotes omitted):

> 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 ___ (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 21). This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.

Biden should have packed the court

Oh, I thought it was perhaps about Calvin Ball, County Executive of Howard County, Maryland.

Apparently he's a pretty good guy. Which is why I didn't steal any of his yard signs, despite desperately wanting to.