Policy / February 24, 2026
The 6-3 decision was a rare victory, but it was the result of conflicts that left almost nothing certain, including future tariff decisions.
A television installed at the New York Stock Exchange broadcasts information about the Supreme Court’s reversal of global tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Donald Trump delivered a typically lopsided news conference on Friday following his 6-3 defeat in Learning Resources, Inc v. Trump…better known as the tariff affair. The court ruled that Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were unconstitutional, and the loss angered Trump. He blasted the judges who ruled against him, including Republicans, calling them “sleazy” and “slimeballs” and accusing them of being under the influence of foreign powers. He praised the dissenting justices, specifically calling alleged rapist Brett Kavanaugh a “genius.” He then seemed to treat the dissent as if it were the winning majority opinion and imposed new 10 percent overall tariffs under a different law (which he increased to 15 percent over the weekend… because, why not), brushed aside statutory language dictating that his new tariffs must expire in 150 days, and declared that the law is now “clear” about his authority to issue tariffs without going through the Congress beforehand.
My friends, nothing is “clear”. It’s unclear whether the government will have to compensate businesses that were hit with illegal taxes under the Trump administration’s tariff regime. (This is what the plaintiffs say in Learning Resources were actually asking). It is not clear whether the majority of the Supreme Court will approve these new tariffs. And if they don’t approve, it’s not clear that Trump will follow court orders when ruling against him. The only thing that is clear is that the global trade economy remains at the mercy of the whims of a madman, while American consumers will continue to pay the price for Trump’s petty international squabbles.
One reason for all the confusion is that conservatives on the Supreme Court are divided on how to apply what they call the “major issues doctrine.” The court didn’t actually use this doctrine in this case, but conservatives wanted it to. Liberals held their ground and Trump lost for a variety of reasons, but most of the decision’s hundreds of pages involved tussling among Republicans over the idea.
According to those who believe it, the major issues doctrine holds that on matters of economic or political “importance,” the Constitution does not intend the president to act unilaterally. “Major” issues must be decided by legislation, and if Congress wants to give the president unilateral powers, it must do so through clear and precise statutory language.
In theory, the Big Questions Doctrine limits what a president can do without Congressional support. This has been a long-term goal of conservatives since at least Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights era. But in practice, this gives all the power to the Supreme Court. Every time Republicans on the Supreme Court talk about returning power to Congress, they are really talking about seizing power: What is a matter of economic or political importance? Only the Supreme Court knows. What constitutes clear and precise legislative language? Only the Supreme Court knows. A reasonable person, president or legislator, cannot know what a “major issue” is, or what language is clear enough to avoid running into a problem. Under the major issues doctrine, all roads lead to the Supreme Court. To paraphrase George W. Bush, it is the Supreme Court, not Congress or the president, that becomes “the decider.”
The reason Republicans have spent so much time yelling at each other about this doctrine that hasn’t actually decided the case is because the Major Issues Doctrine has a critical flaw: It’s entirely made up. This is not written anywhere – not in the Constitution, not in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Magna Carta, not in the Bible or in the Mahabharata. It’s just not historical thing. No one currently in court has heard of the major issues doctrine in law school, because it had not been invented when they were in law school. Conservative law professors essentially concocted this “doctrine” around 2014 (they say necessity is the mother of all invention, and the existence of a black president certainly seems to necessitate the invention of ways to restrict Barack Obama’s powers) as they tried to find a way to limit the effectiveness of Obamacare. Justice Neil Gorsuch quickly became a champion of this idea.
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You can see why this doctrine is useful to a power-hungry Supreme Court justice. Basically, it allows unelected members of the Court to overturn the policies of an elected president because he believes these policies are important. It is a wild and unlimited power. Imagine going through the trouble of winning an entire presidential election and being told by the court that you can’t implement your policies because they are “politically significant.” The major questions doctrine places the Supreme Court first among the supposedly coequal branches of government.
All Republicans on the high court now agree that their imaginary power is real, but, fortunately for those of us who would like to vote for our leaders, that’s all Republicans can agree on when it comes to this doctrine. They disagree about where, legally speaking, the Major Questions Doctrine comes from, when it should be used, or what limits (if any) should be placed on the power they have given themselves. This is why the doctrine has so far only been used to put an end to Joe Biden’s policies. In the case of Biden’s student debt relief policy, for example, Republicans could agree that they didn’t like the policy — and, since they had no constitutional or legal reason to block it, they invoked the major issues doctrine to stop it.
Prices are another matter. Republicans on the court disagreed that Trump’s tariffs were bad policy, so they couldn’t agree on whether or even how to use their new “Democrats lose” button against Trump. Justices John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have all said that the doctrine could be used to ban Trump’s tariffs, but liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — declined to invoke the doctrine. Trump lost the case, 6 to 3, on the grounds that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give him the authority he claimed to impose tariffs. There you go, no major questions required.
Congressional Democrats could learn something from liberal women serving on the Supreme Court. Despite being in the minority and being offered a far-fetched theory that would have assured them a short-term victory in this case, the liberal justices stood their ground, did not blink, and forced the vast conservative majority to try to find among themselves votes for their anti-democratic “doctrine.”
The Republicans couldn’t. They split on how to use the major issues doctrine in the tariff case, with Justices Roberts, Gorsuch, Barrett, Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all writing separately, each with their own favorite theories about how it should work. I’ve seen this kind of broken story before because… I watch everything Star Wars content. The doctrine of the big questions is as much a fiction as “the Force”. If you look Star Wars and its billions of spinoffs, you know that different writers give the Jedis and Sith different powers, abilities, and weaknesses, depending on what they need the Force users to do in their stories. It’s the same thing with Republicans on the Supreme Court. One of the main advantages of basing your universe on a fictional power is that it can do anything you say; the downside is that different people will say it can do different things.
Only three Republican justices ruled that the major issues doctrine should be used in the tariff case, but even they disagreed on how and why. Chief Justice Roberts said the major issues doctrine must apply to tariffs, if it applies to anything, because the power to tax (which is what a tariff is) is the most “major” economic issue for the country. Gorsuch said the doctrine is a fundamental constitutional principle (it is not) that must be strictly enforced in almost every case where the president acts without the explicit authority of Congress (including this one). Barrett, on the other hand, said that using the major issues doctrine is a “common sense” analytical tool, but it does not necessarily have to be the only thing the court considers.
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The dissidents also failed to reach a consensus. Kavanaugh said the doctrine “does not apply in the foreign affairs context,” meaning that presidents can do whatever they want in foreign matters (like imposing tariffs) as long as there is some congressional authority to do so. Kavanaugh’s wording is a completely new thing that had never been said about the doctrine until Friday, and it makes it sound like he made something up on the fly to please Trump. Thomas, meanwhile, agreed with Kavanaugh, but went even further, crowning the president as a pirate king completely independent of Congress as soon as his desires touched water’s edge. Justice Samuel Alito joined Kavanaugh’s dissent but did not write separately — I suspect because he was too busy planning his retirement party.
All this chaos means I really can’t tell you how the Supreme Court will decide following tariff matter. Will Republicans unite to decide that language in other laws “more clearly” supports Trump’s tariffs? Or will they continue their sectarian war to see which imaginary friend is more powerful? And what about all the non-tariff cases in which major questions could also arise? Is birthright citizenship a “major issue” or is it a foreign policy issue in which the president is a god-king? Will Luke Skywalker ever be able to shoot lightning from the tip with his fingers, or is that something only “bad” people do? Who can know? Who will ever know when the Supreme Court is making this up as it goes along?
What I can know is this: In tonight’s State of the Union address, Trump will threaten new authoritarian policies. Republicans will applaud these policies like trained seals, but they will not use their legislative authority to enact them. Instead, Trump will make unilateral executive declarations, Congress will do nothing, and will trigger a new round of lawsuits and appeals.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will tell us whether the State of the Union is a “major issue” or a pointless exercise.
Elie Mystal Elie Mystal is The nationjustice correspondent and columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: New York Times bestseller Let me respond: A Guide to the Constitution for Black Men And Bad Laws: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining Americaboth published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie c. US » here.
