Seeing the Trees, But Ignoring the Forest

The case of Learning Resources v. Trump was the economic blockbuster of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 term. In a 6-3 decision, the Court invalidated sweeping tariffs imposed by President Donald J. Trump on goods imported from around the world.

This case demonstrates the best of the Roberts Court—but also its profound shortcomings. On the “best” side of the ledger, the Court produced an excellent set of opinions on a narrow question of statutory interpretation. Yet the Court also failed to grapple with the stark separation-of-powers problem at the heart of the case.

The background is familiar to most readers. Coming into his second term, President Trump viewed tariffs as “the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary” and a solution to many of America’s challenges. During his first term, he had imposed numerous tariffs by using powers delegated in various trade-specific statutes. In his second term, however, he wanted a quick and unconstrained path to unilaterally imposing dramatic tariffs on a global scale. He claimed to find this power in the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). IEEPA gives the President sweeping powers to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary” foreign “threat … to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” including the power to “regulate” the “importation” of “property.” President Trump, therefore, announced that the U.S. trade deficit in goods was an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States. And voilà! He thought he could now impose vast tariffs on goods imported from countries around the globe. Importers quickly challenged these tariffs as unlawful; the lower courts agreed; and the Supreme Court took up the case.

The Court framed the case as an either/or question about a textual phrase: Does IEEPA’s delegation of power to the President to “regulate” the “importation” of “property” include the power to impose tariffs?

This simple framing allowed the justices to approach the case as about clean-cut, binary textual analysis. And, within this approach, they produced a set of opinions that are impressive and satisfying in three ways.

First, the opinions do a great job of working through what is, to me, a genuinely hard issue of statutory interpretation. Interpretive signals point in different directions, and we get to hear about them all. From the opinion of the Court by the Chief Justice: Since its 1977 enactment, IEEPA has never been used for tariffs; Congress has expressly delegated tariff powers in a patchwork of other statutes; and we should be skeptical that Congress has “hid a delegation of its birth-right power to tax within the quotidian power to ‘regulate.’” All good points. From the principal dissent by Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “regulate” is a word with a broad meaning that can encompass tariffs; parallel language in the predecessor statute to IEEPA was used once for major tariffs; and past wartime practice shows us why Congress might very well want Presidents to be able to impose tariffs during emergencies. All good points as well.

The second satisfying thing about the opinions is the side-show: the fracas about the major questions doctrine. On this issue, the justices are wonky, passionate, and divided. Chief Justice John G. Roberts applies the doctrine, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Gorsuch considers it to be embedded in constitutional structure. His 46-page concurrence also vehemently objects to the approaches taken by seven of his colleagues. Justice Barrett, by contrast, sees the major questions doctrine as an “ordinary application of textualism.” Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson do not think the doctrine exists. Finally, Justices Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito think that the major questions doctrine exists with respect to domestic but not foreign affairs. Where does all this leave us? With more clarity about the views of each particular justice but arguably less clarity about the doctrine. Overall, it is a pleasing window into judicial craft—and good fodder for the classroom.

A final reason that Learning Resources shows the Roberts Court at its best is that the case does not divide along straight liberal/conservative lines. Three Republican appointees joined three Democratic appointees in ruling against the Trump Administration. In this era of high partisanship, this bipartisan agreement is something to appreciate.

All of this I like. Yet reading this case, I cannot help feeling disappointed.

This is because the core issue is not a parsing of the words “regulate … importation.” Rather, it is the problem of a President who grossly misuses legal authority—without any compunction or any interest in good faith. This problem goes to the heart of our constitutional system of checks and balances—and one whose solution depends on the separation of powers.

None of the six justices in the majority engage with this issue. They easily could have done so. The most obvious way would have been to take up the question of whether the long-standing U.S. trade deficit in goods—which predates the passage of IEEPA in 1977—is in fact an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” The answer to that question is easy: It is not. Yet the case was teed up to focus on the “regulate … importation” issue—presumably in part because of the Court’s prior reluctance to take on the problem of pretext—and none of the justices looked at the emergency issue. Nor, unlike the Federal Circuit below, did they consider whether the magnitude of Trump’s tariffs was so significant that they might be unlawful even if “regulating importation” could encompass some tariffs.

So, the Court dealt with the trees, but it said nothing about the forest. There is no opinion in this case that comes anywhere close to the glorious concurring opinion of Justice Robert Jackson in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer, with its recognition of the strains that the party system has placed on our system of checks and balances and its candid discussion of presidential power. Ironically, Justice Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion is the one that makes the most references to Justice Jackson’s concurrence—although without acknowledging Jackson’s core point that the Court should be wary of “aggrandizing the presidential office, already so potent and so relatively immune from judicial review.”

The tariffs case is now behind us. The larger problem of abuse of presidential power remains with us—all too much.

Jean Galbraith is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her research focuses on U.S. foreign relations law and public international law.