The Roberts Court Rejects Trump's Tariffs

An initial take on Learning Resources v. Trump.

Last Friday's opinion for the Court in Learning Resources v. Trump was mercifully short. The full stack of opinions, not so much.

The dueling opinions give us academic types lots of interesting material to chew on, including what to make of the fact that four separate opinions embrace the major questions doctrine, but do so in different ways, and how to assess Justice Thomas' suggestion that the nondelegation doctrine should be understood as much as a matter of due process as Article I vesting.

In the meantime, Learning Resources is an unquestionably important opinion. I wrote up some of my initial thoughts for Civitas Outlook. My column begins:

On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a sharp rebuke to the Trump Administration, rejecting the President's attempt to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on foreign nations. President Trump had asserted the "extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope." Yet in Learning Resources v. Trump, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a six-justice majority, concluded that IEEPA "does not authorize the President to impose tariffs," period. In this conclusion, the Chief Justice was joined by the Court's three liberals — Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson — and two of Trump's three appointees to the Court —Justices Gorsuch and Barrett. Justice Kavanaugh dissented, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito.

Learning Resources was the first case in which the Supreme Court reviewed one of the second Trump Administration's policy initiatives on the merits, and, as was so often the case during Trump's first term, the Administration came up short. However much authority the President may have to impose tariffs under other statutes, and however much deference the executive branch is due in other contexts, the Trump Administration's "Liberation Day" tariffs were a bridge too far.

Read the rest here.

Comments

[ReaderY]

It seems to me that as a basic principle of judicial modesty and restraint, the Court should not attempt to deploy a controversial interpretative tool if a standard one would do.

As 4 of the 6 Justices in the majority found, conventional statutory interpretation worked perfectly well in this case and the statute wasn’t anywhere near close to ambiguous.

So I see no reason for all these lengthy extra opinions. The Chief Justice should have simply dropped the section on the Major Questions Doctrine when he saw that most justices in tbe majority weren’t going to join, and avoided this entire completely advisory and totally academic hullabaloo over something utterly unnecessary to deciding the case.