Supreme Court finds its voice to hold Trump in check
By Noah Feldman / Bloomberg Opinion
It took almost a decade, but Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court finally found a way to stand up to President Donald Trump’s executive power overreach, striking down the tariffs that are the signature initiative of his presidency. Not since the Supreme Court struck down the first New Deal in 1935 has the court reversed a policy of comparable importance to a sitting president.
The 6-3 decision gives Trump two options. He can accept the outcome and attempt to reenact various tariffs using other sources of legal authority, triggering future legal battles that he might win if he sticks to legally mandated procedures. In that case, the court’s conservative majority will continue to allow many of his extensions of executive power to stand in other areas.
Or Trump can take an extremely aggressive stand against the court, in which case the decision could become a turning point, emboldening the justices to strike down additional Trump initiatives that violate longstanding legal precedent.
The tariffs case presented an especially good opportunity for the court to take on Trump because it could be confident that its decision would actually be implemented. Unlike a situation in which the court orders the executive branch, say, to return a person deported abroad, and the executive might refuse, the collection of tariffs is a legal proceeding that cannot proceed without judicial authorization. The opinion in the tariffs case will boost not only the court’s legitimacy as an institution capable of standing up to the president but also its power to constrain Trump in practice.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-supreme-court-finds-its-voice-to-hold-trump-in-check/