Opinion | Tariffs are the Supreme Court’s biggest test yet – The Washington Post

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion | Jason Willick

The fate of Trump’s tariffs hinges on this Supreme Court doctrine

Will justices rein in presidential power or entrench suspicions of partisan bias?

September 12, 2025 at 7:45 a.m. EDT, Today at 7:45 a.m. EDT, 5 min

There will be plenty of legal clashes in the next three-plus years of Donald Trump’s term in office, but it’s hard to imagine that any will be more significant — for the presidency or the Supreme Court — than the tariff case the justices agreed to hear this week.

For the presidency the case is crucial because, even though executive power has swelled in the 21st century, one key constraint remains: Congress’s exclusive power to fund the government. The president might control “the sword,” as the Founding Fathers put it, but the people’s elected representatives can always withhold the money he needs to use it. If the president can spontaneously impose tariffs at any level, at any time, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year without congressional approval, that fundamental constraint is not holding.

For the Supreme Court the case is crucial because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has vigorously applied a doctrine against the last two Democratic administrations aimed at limiting precisely this kind of executive adventurism. The “major questions doctrine” basically says that executive actions with a huge political and economic impact are legally suspect if they are not clearly authorized by Congress or the Constitution.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

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