[24-1287] Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump

Would you spend a few minutes on why exactly the major question doctrine doesn't apply to the President in this case?

Yes, Justice Thomas, and I may make two or three points on that front.

First of all, though the major questions doctrine may apply to the President in other contexts, specifically in the foreign affairs context where he has his own inherent article to authority, it's a particularly poor fit to apply the major questions doctrine, and that's for at least two reasons.

First of all, just as a matter of kind of common sense interpretation, one would expect Congress to confer major powers on the President to address major issues you know, sort of foreign, international crises, so to speak, in foreign arising emergencies, that that's just sort of a natural common sense thing you expect Congress to do.

And in fact, you know, Justice Jackson in his Youngstown opinion addressed this very situation in pages 652 and 653, when he says, this is the system within our, or this is the procedure within our constitutional system that we have developed to strike the balance.

You know, what Dames and Moore described as the never-ending tension between The need for the executive to address – have a robust power to address emergencies and to subject it to checks and balances.

What our constitutional system has devised to address that particular problem, that never-ending tension, is the system where Congress confers broad and necessary powers in advance and subjects them to ongoing political oversight, which is exactly what you see in IEPA.

So that's one reason.

you would expect Congress to grant major powers to the president who has his own broad range of major authority, inherent article to authority in this context.

And that is Butcher's point.

Can I interrupt you,

General, there? And I know that you have a second question, and I want to let you get to that.

But just on that first reason, it seemed to depend a lot on the President's inherent Article II powers.

And I'm wondering what exactly, which powers you're speaking of there.

Because tariffs, one would naturally think, are the power to impose taxes, the power to regulate foreign commerce.

These are not things that are thought of as Article II powers.

They are quintessential Article I powers.

So What kind of Article II powers are you relying on when you gave the answer about major questions to Justice Thomas?

I would refer to what the Court said, for example, in Egan, Department of Navy.

It's Egan that's a generally accepted view that the President has broad authority in the foreign affairs realm.

There's been debates about exactly how far it goes and how to draw the boundary between the President and Congress.

But Egan, Garamendi, other cases, Curtis Wright, the Court has recognized the President has broad broad inherent authority to address foreign situations, foreign affairs, foreign policy, including foreign arising emergencies.

Now, we don't contend that he has, at least in peacetime, inherent tariffing authority.

What we have here is two layers.

There's the layer, the bedrock of the president's you know, inherent Article II powers, and layered on top of that is a sweeping delegation of authority from Congress.