'Withering rebuke': Legal expert says Supreme Court sent Trump a 'blunt message'

President Donald Trump's loss at the Supreme Court over his tariff policy was more than a big blow to his agenda, Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate on Friday — it was a hopeful sign for judicial independence, and a shot across the bow by a Supreme Court that for a year has mostly rubber-stamped his legal priorities.

"Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for the court sends the blunt message that Trump should not expect SCOTUS to rubber-stamp all of his expansions of executive power, no matter how much political pressure he puts on the justices," wrote Stern, a frequent critic of the court's right-wing bloc. "This rejoinder may be surprising given the Republican-appointed supermajority’s previous tolerance for the president’s assertions of king-like authority. But as Roberts’ crisp, confident opinion explains, allowing the president to impose taxes unilaterally — at least without clear congressional authority — is an existential threat to the very 'existence and prosperity' of the nation."

Trump had sought to claim unlimited tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a statute that doesn't even mention the word "tariffs." Roberts was joined by Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and all the liberals in smacking this down.

"As the chief explained, the Constitution assigns primary authority over tariffs to Congress, not the president," Stern wrote. "'Recognizing the taxing power’s unique importance,' the Framers gave Congress alone 'access to the pockets of the people.' And tariffs, of course, are 'a tax levied on imported goods and services.'" Additionally, Stern noted, Roberts pointed out that "The government could not identify 'any statute in which the power to regulate includes the power to tax.'"

The dissents were penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which Stern derided as "an embarrassment that cannot be squared with much of his jurisprudence under Biden," and Justice Clarence Thomas, who for much of his career has endorsed the "non-delegation doctrine" prohibiting Congress from handing new powers to the executive branch, but now turns around and says tariffs are "powers of the Crown" and therefore exempt from that. "It is difficult to read this dissent as anything other than Thomas amending his views to accommodate Trump’s power-grabs," fumed Stern.

Nonetheless, he concluded, the majority opinion by Roberts was a sensible one — and a bright spot of hope on a court that offers him little.

"It does take courage for the justices to stand up to the president this way, especially when he has tried to bully them into ruling in his favor," wrote Stern. "Since Trump returned to the White House, we have wondered whether the Supreme Court could muster enough independence to save our constitutional system from his efforts to consolidate all power in the Oval Office. Too often, SCOTUS has shirked from this duty. But there are still some lines it won’t let Trump cross."