Perhaps as early as this Friday, the Supreme Court will announce a ruling in the Trump administration’s tariff cases, Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections. The takeaway from the oral argument back in November was clear: the administration is in trouble and headed for defeat.
For many on the Left, such a blow to Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration might sound like cause for celebration. It is not.
Apart from the fact that such a ruling would pose little threat to Trump’s punitive tariffs, which the White House could pursue under different statutes, the main problem is that any decision invalidating the current tariff regime would almost certainly rest on the Supreme Court’s increasingly aggressive use of the major questions doctrine.
The court is likely to argue that if Congress wanted to authorize tariffs with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — as the administration claims — then it would have said so clearly. By using the IEEPA as a legal basis for imposing tariffs, the Trump administration is taking an action with “vast economic significance” (that is, acting on a “major question”) and stretching the 1977 act beyond recognition. In other words, the executive has overstepped its authority.
Although at first glance a decision based on this logic does not appear dangerous, the recent history of the major questions doctrine demonstrates its potential to empower an unelected and highly conservative judiciary to obstruct social progress. A ruling against the Trump White House would further entrench this menacing legal principle.
The doctrine has already done enormous damage. The first case to explicitly invoke it was West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022, in which the court blocked federal climate regulation by demanding “clear congressional authorization” for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. In 2023, in Biden v. Nebraska, the…
Auteur: Harry Blain
