Justice Jackson accuses colleagues of partisan decision-making

United States Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jack recently accused her fellow justices of being biased in favor of the administration of President Donald Trump. 

Jackson did so, according to Fox News, in the dissent that she wrote in the recently decided case regarding the Trump administration’s attempt to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

We will see why this claim is both unusual and absurd.

Justice Jackson’s quote from her dissent in “National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health” :”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.” https://t.co/PXU3FJpfTN

— John Milton Freedom Foundation (@JohnMiltonFF) August 23, 2025

Here’s what she said:

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court did rule in favor of the Trump administration in the NIH case.

The court essentially gave the Trump administration the green light to cut millions in funding grants for the NIH. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, and, among other things, he criticized lower courts for openly defying Supreme Court precedent. In other words, if the lower courts followed the Supreme Court’s precedent, as they are supposed to, the case would never have even made it to the Supreme Court.

Jackson, nonetheless, criticized her colleagues for the decision.

The Biden appointee, in her dissent, wrote: “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.”

“Calvinball jurisprudence” is merely applying rules inconsistely, especially for self-serving reasons. That is what she alleged the Supreme Court majority – her fellow colleagues – did in this case.

Too liberal for the liberals

Fox News contributor and Constitutional attorney Jonathan Turley explains why Jackson’s dissent in this case is nonsense.

He writes:

Jackson has attacked her colleagues in opinions, shattering traditions of civility and restraint. Her colleagues have clearly had enough. She now regularly writes diatribes that neither of her fellow liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — are willing to sign on to. Indeed, she has raged against opinions that her liberal colleagues have joined.

But, Turley does not stop there. He goes on to explain why her dissent is “crushingly ironic.”

He writes:

For some of us who have followed Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure on the court, it was crushingly ironic. Although Jackson accused her colleagues of following a new rule that they must always rule with Trump, she herself is widely viewed as the very embodiment of the actual rule of the made-up game based on the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes. In Jacksonian jurisprudence, it often seems like there are no fixed rules, only fixed outcomes. She then attacks her colleagues for a lack of integrity or empathy.

So much for “the law.”

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