Calvinball
noun
a situation in which rules are changed or made up capriciously
What does Calvinball mean?
Calvinball refers to situation in which rules (whether established or unspoken) are ignored, changed, made up on the spot, etc., to achieve a desired and suspiciously self-serving outcome.
Examples of Calvinball
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a lengthy dissent in which she criticized both the outcome and her colleagues' willingness to continue allowing the administration to use the court’s emergency appeals process. “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,” she wrote …
—Lindsay Whitehurst The Associated Press, 22 Aug. 2025
I was trying to come up with a way to describe … why interest rates should go up despite high unemployment and quiescent inflation. … it’s Calvinball—making up new rules on the fly to justify whatever you, for some reason, want.
—There isn’t any plausible legal justification for this. This is Calvinball at its worst. The Supreme Court majority just ignores its own rules whenever doing so benefits its favored parties
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Where does Calvinball come from?
Calvinball is the name of a game invented by the titular Calvin (a young boy) and Hobbes (his stuffed tiger) in Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which ran from 1985 to 1995. The rules, and even the objectives, are always changing in Calvinball, in random or self-serving ways.
Intensifying the problem is that Congress gets to write its own rules. That means that Congress can also ignore the rules it sets. It’s like the game of Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes; the players can both make and change the rules more or less as they go.
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How is Calvinball used?
Calvinball is often used in political discussions, and with no small amount of exasperation, to characterize an opponent’s political decisions or maneuvering.
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