Climateer Investing: Supreme Court: "When will we get the tariffs ruling?"

Two views of what might be happening.

First up, SCOTUSblog, January 29:

On Nov. 5, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the challenges to President Donald Trump’s authority to impose broad tariffs through a series of executive orders that he issued in 2025. As is often the case with high-profile cases, there is enormous interest in how the court will rule. But with U.S. importers paying billions of dollars each month in tariffs, another pressing question for many is when the court will issue its decision.

The short (and perhaps frustrating) answer is that the justices will release their opinion when they are ready. So far, they have not signaled that they regard this dispute as the kind of emergency that many in the outside world do, suggesting that they may not release the opinion at least until they take the bench again on Feb. 20.

The dispute also illustrates an important, but often underappreciated, aspect of the court: many of its operations are governed by informal practices or unwritten internal rules, rather than formal guidelines.

Here is a brief explainer of how the court goes about drafting and issuing opinions, and how that process might be playing out in the tariffs dispute.

The opinion-writing process

The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the tariffs dispute on Wednesday, Nov. 5. The justices would have voted on the dispute at one of their conferences that week – likely on Friday, Nov. 7.

Once the justices vote on a case, the senior justice in the majority (which would be either Chief Justice John Roberts or, if he is not in the majority, the justice who has been on the court the longest) determines who will draft the majority opinion; the senior justice among the dissenters decides who will write the main dissenting opinion.

When the draft of the majority opinion is finished, the author sends it to the other eight justices. Those justices may opt to “join” the majority opinion as it is drafted, or they may ask the author to make changes to the majority opinion before they agree to sign on. The New York Times reported, for example, that Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all agreed relatively quickly to join Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, holding that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.

Once the majority opinion has been circulated to the court, the author of the dissent will then send that opinion to the rest of the court. Some justices may also decide to write their own opinions. For instance, they may agree with the result that the majority reaches but not its reasoning, or they may agree with its reasoning but write separately to explain or elaborate on an additional point. Similarly, justices may write separate dissenting opinions – either because they disagree with the main dissent’s reasoning or because they want to raise another argument.

Drafts of the various opinions go back and forth between the justices, who sometimes make changes to respond to each other. This takes time. When the justices are divided – particularly if there are more opinions than just a majority opinion and a dissent – it often takes even longer to finalize the opinions. (A former Supreme Court law clerk once described to me a lengthy exchange between the justice for whom he worked, who was writing a dissent, and the author of the majority opinion, over a footnote that was ultimately deleted from the final draft.) Once the opinions are ready to go, the court will release them to the public.

Which brings us to the tariffs dispute. In this case, the conventional wisdom after the oral argument was that a majority of the justices were skeptical of Trump’s power to impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But even if that proves to be true, it was not necessarily clear that there was a consensus on why Trump would lack that authority. For example, Roberts suggested that Trump’s assertion of power under IEEPA might violate the “major questions” doctrine, which is the idea that if Congress wants to grant power to make decisions of vast economic or political significance it must say so clearly. But Justice Elena Kagan potentially saw a different problem: she contended that Congress, rather than the president, has the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign trade....

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And from the Washington Post, February 1:

A mysterious delay in the Supreme Court tariffs case
The Trump administration, though the underdog, will find each passing week an encouraging sign.

On May 12, 1952, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what is now probably its most important case on presidential power: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. With the Korean War raging, President Harry S. Truman had ordered the government to take over U.S. steel mills. The businesses sued and the Supreme Court had to decide, quickly, whether Truman exceeded his authority.
The justices held their conference to discuss the case a few days later. “Well, boys, the president got licked,” Justice Robert H. Jackson said to his law clerks after the meeting. On June 2 — just three weeks after oral argument — the court released its 6-3 ruling against Truman.
That lightning-fast timeline for a landmark case is striking as the country and the world await the current Supreme Court’s ruling on President Donald Trump’s global tariffs. Like Truman, Trump is citing national security to claim vast powers over private business in the United States.
But more than 12 weeks have already passed since the Nov. 5, 2025 arguments in the tariffs case. Now the court is on break, meaning a decision is unlikely for at least a few more weeks. Judging by the oral argument, Trump is the underdog in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump. But the longer the case drags on without resolution, the less likely it is that the president got licked.
The Trump administration was prepared for an earlier decision. “We would expect a ruling in January,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in August, gaming out the timeline on Fox Business. On Jan. 9, when the court was scheduled to announce opinions, the solicitor general, who argued the case, and his staff appeared at the courthouse, according to SCOTUSblog. “Seeing who’s here, it’s not the case you thought,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The lengthy deliberations are a puzzle because the case is not particularly complex. The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to “regulate” imports in an emergency. Trump says this IEEPA language means he can impose unlimited tariffs on any country at will, even though the Constitution gives the tariff power to Congress. The Supreme Court has decided a series of similar cases in recent years emphasizing that Congress needs to speak clearly to give sweeping powers over the economy to the executive branch. This legislation doesn’t mention the power to tax or tariff.
During arguments in a different case last year, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. highlighted the ability of the Supreme Court to move “expeditiously” when it has to, adding: “I think we did the TikTok case in a month.” Indeed, its January 2025 decision on legislation forcing the sale of TikTok came one week after oral arguments because of a looming deadline for the law to go into effect.
The uncertainty around Trump’s IEEPA tariffs is affecting businesses, of course, but also Congress — which can’t get an accurate revenue picture until the fate of Trump’s tariffs is settled — and the Federal Reserve, which has to factor in tariffs to its forecasts for inflation.
Then there’s Trump’s tariff-centered diplomacy. The president’s tariff threats against European countries over Greenland last month might have hurt his cause at the Supreme Court if they made him appear to be abusing power. On the other hand, they emphasized that Trump views tariffs as his primary foreign-policy tool — and the Supreme Court has historically been reluctant to intervene in a president’s foreign policy.
It could be that several justices are writing separate concurrences or dissents, prolonging the process. But the Youngstown case that took just three weeks featured seven opinions among the nine justices. Jackson, at least, began to draft his famous concurrence before hearing oral arguments, as law professor Gerard N. Magliocca notes. The current justices have known for months that the IEEPA tariff case was coming their way....