Thoughts on the Potential Broader Significance of the Supreme Court’s Tariff Decision

How significant is the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Trump’s massive IEEPA tariffs in Learning Resources v. Trump? Only time will truly tell. It’s often hard to fully appreciate the importance (or lack thereof) of a decision until we have some historical perspective on it, and see how it impacts future cases. But there is good reason to believe it will have at least some substantial impact, perhaps in multiple ways.

Certainly, a good many prominent observers seem to think so. Conservative New York Times columnist David French (who is also a well-known lawyer and legal commentator) wrote that the ruling “may prove to be the most important Supreme Court decision this century” and that “it may have saved the republic.” Harvard law Prof. Jack Goldsmith – a former high-ranking Bush Administration official and leading expert on executive power and foreign affairs issues – describes it as “a massive defeat for the president” and a “blockbuster on many levels.” After initially downplaying its significance, my co-blogger Josh Blackman now says the decision is “the Worst Judicial Defeat in Presidential History.” He adds that “I think we are already seeing that Trump’s efforts to use alternative statutory authorities will not work.”

I rarely agree with Josh, in recent years. But I hope he turns out to be right about these two points. And I certainly believe the effort to use “alternative statutory authorities” deserves to be rejected by courts. See my recent article about why Trump’s new Section 122 tariffs are illegal.

For my part, I think it is hard to make definitive judgments about the ruling’s significance at this point. And it is particularly hard for me to be objective about it; I was one of the attorneys on the case, and it had its origins in a blog post I wrote at this very website. An impartial observer of this case I am not.

That said, I doubt that it is either the most important decision of the century, or the biggest judicial defeat a president has ever experienced. Those are very high bars! In addition, it is difficult to compare the impact of decisions in very different fields of law. But I do think the ruling is likely to prove significant in various ways.

First, the Court rejected Trump’s effort to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to claim virtually unlimited presidential authority to impose tariffs – what Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, called the power to “impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.” That’s significant even if it has little or no broader doctrinal impact. The consequences of a decision the other way would have been devastating to the American economy and the rule of law. Ditto for the consequences of simply letting the IEEPA tariffs stand without challenging them.

Moreover, as discussed in my Atlantic article about the decision, all six justices in the majority – in different ways – expressed general skepticism of the idea that the president could ever wield such sweeping tariff authority. That point goes beyond the specifics of IEEPA and implies a general willingness to rule against future presidential power grabs in this important field.

A second important aspect of the decision is that the three conservative justices in the majority – Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett –  held that the “major questions doctrine” (which  requires Congress to “speak clearly” when authorizing the executive to make “decisions of vast economic and political significance”) applies to tariffs and possibly to other delegations of congressional power related to “foreign affairs.” That further limits future presidential power grabs.  These three justices also signaled their willingness to apply the major questions doctrine to power grabs by Republican presidents, as much as Democratic ones. Many observers previously doubted they would do that.

To be sure, the opinions of three justices are not a binding precedent of the majority of the Court. But, as Jack Goldsmith notes, these three justices are likely to be crucial swing votes in future cases involving executive power, and will have a lot of leverage:

A very significant aspect of the Chief Justice’s MQD analysis is that three conservative justices embraced it to rule against President Trump’s signature policy. And they did so in the most difficult possible context, with an issue involving national security and foreign affairs. This is a rebuttal to those who have claimed that the Court, or at least those three justices, invoke the doctrine opportunistically and politically to hurt Democratic presidents. And I think it signals more clearly than ever that, going forward, this Court is going to view broad delegations of statutory authority to a president to act, and/or extravagant presidential interpretations of authorizations to act, with skepticism. The three justices firmly committed here to the MQD can (if they wish) ensure that outcome in a case of just about any political configuration.

Finally, the case is a further demonstration of the potential effectiveness of combining litigation and political action as a strategy for resisting abuses of government power.  I summarized the advantages (as well as some limitations) of this approach in a May 2025 UnPopulist article, where I built in part on my and others’ previous academic work. I think it worked here.

We prevailed in part because we developed strong legal arguments, and because our team had outstanding lawyers like famed Supreme Court litigators Neal Katyal and Michael McConnell, and Jeff Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center (all vastly better litigators than me!). But it also helped that we were effective in waging the “war of ideas” in the public arena outside the courtroom, influencing the climate of elite and public opinion. The climate of opinion can matter in high-profile litigation.

The fact that the tariffs became highly unpopular also likely helped at the margin, perhaps making it easier for judges to rule against the president’s signature policy initiative. A YouGov poll taken soon after the decision found that 60% of Americans approve of the result, while only 23% disapprove.

I highly doubt that any lower-court judge or Supreme Court justice ruled against the tariffs primarily because of their unpopularity. But, for judges inclined to conclude the tariffs were illegal, that unpopularity may have made it easier for them to stand up to the president on a high-profile issue than might otherwise have been the case. The tariffs’ unpopularity was at least in part due to effective political advocacy against them (almost entirely that of people outside our legal team), emphasizing how they were increasing prices. As I explained in a 2024 post, focusing on price increases is a time-honored effective strategy for turning public opinion against protectionism.

Just as I tried to learn from the experience of previous efforts to protect constitutional rights and enforce limits on government power, so future public interest litigators and activists might learn from ours. I may have more to say about the “war of ideas” aspect of the case in future writings. Here, I merely suggest it is a noteworthy part of the story, and one that may be of use in efforts to combat future abuses of government power.