alt Hacker NewsIt's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.
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It really isn't ill-defined at all. Both the constitution and the law allowing the president to impose tariffs for national security reasons is clear. There are just some partisan hacks on the Supreme Court.
Fully agree, but that's what happens when you keep piling laws on top of laws on top of laws and never go back and refactor. If I recall correctly, the case hinged on some vague wording in a semi-obscure law passed back in 1977.
It kind of shows that the USA does not have that strong means against becoming a dictatorship. George Washington probably did not think through the problem of the superrich bribing the whole system into their own use cases to be had.
They all agree. A couple of them just chose to pretend they didn't.
And that it took this long to get an answer to that question.
But that's not the issue.
'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants'
No, he can't impost tariffs on any country. He can only impose tariffs on American companies willing to import from any country.
The opinion should merely read
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises
(which it does, and expounds upon)
Two of the justices would be happy to let Trump get away with murder. It's not that the law is ill-defined so much as a few justices are extremely partisan. Happily, a quorum of saner heads came about in this instance.
In normal democracies you have multiple parties, so there is a much better chance of creating a coalition around the government and force election/impeachment if the leadership goes rouge. The US system turned out to be as fragile as it looks.
The thing is he usually cannot but sometimes can. The issue is around "sometimes".
>apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it
That is not how the Supreme Court works. SCOTUS is a political body. Justices do one thing: cast votes. For any reason.
If they write an opinion it is merely their post hoc justification for their vote. Otherwise they do not have to explain anything. And when they do write an opinion it does not necessarily reflect the real reason for the way they voted.
Edit: Not sure why anyone is downvoting this comment. I was a trial attorney for 40+ years. If you believe what I posted is legally inaccurate, then provide a comment. But downvoting without explaining is ... just ... I don't know ... cowardly?
Statutory Law is 50,000 pages, and that's just the beginning of everything you need to consider.
Make stupid laws, win stupid prizes.
It's almost like the legal system is designed so that you can get away with murder if you can afford enough lawyers.
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It seems likely to me the ruling took this long because John Roberts wanted to get a more unanimous ruling.
Additionally, the law in this case isn’t ill defined whatsoever. Alito, Thomas, and to a lesser extent Kavanaugh are just partisan hacks. For many years I wanted to believe they had a consistent and defensible legal viewpoint, even if I thought it was misguided. However the past six years have destroyed that notion. They’re barely even trying to justify themselves in most of these rulings; and via the shadow docket frequently deny us even that barest explanation.