The Supreme Court is set to take up two cases that challenge President Trump's sweeping tariff policy. CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson breaks it down.

Washington

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider two cases challenging the legality of tariffs imposed by President Trump. Lower courts previously ruled that Trump exceeded his authority, as the statute he relied on, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), does not explicitly mention tariffs and has not been used for such purposes before.

The central issue before the Supreme Court is whether Congress intended to delegate its constitutional power to impose tariffs to the president through the IEEPA. While the tariffs remain in place during the legal process, the Supreme Court's decision will clarify the extent of presidential authority over trade measures. The court's emergency or 'shadow docket' decisions have allowed some Trump policies to proceed temporarily, but these are not final rulings on the merits.

Supreme Court to tackle two major cases challenging Trump's tariffs

OK. The U.S. Supreme Court plans to take up two cases involving the president's tariff policies. Those tariffs will stay in place after the Federal Court of Appeals ruled President Trump exceeded his authority by imposing them. I'm going to bring in CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson to join me to talk about this. She's also a Loyola law professor. So let's begin with these tariffs. The tariff cases and the legal arguments that are being made, Jessica, break that down for our audience. So we have to start with the Constitution because the Constitution gives Congress the power to do things like lay and collect taxes and duties and to oversee interstate commerce. Now the question then is, can Congress give that power away? So next, Vlad, we have to look at statutes. And that's exactly what's happening in this case. We're looking to see if Congress gave its authority to impose tariffs to the president. I think the issue for the president and why he has faced challenges in the lower courts and frankly losses in the lower courts is because he's putting his money, essentially, he's placing his argument on a statute that doesn't use the word tariff and has never been used to impose tariffs. It's something called the IEEPA. And he's making kind of a novel argument that that particular statute gives him emergency power to do a lot of things, including these reciprocal tariffs. So far, as we just mentioned, courts have not been receptive to this argument. But it really will be, in the first instance, a matter of all the justices looking at that statute and trying to figure out, did Congress want to give the occupant of the Oval Office the power to do what President Trump is trying to do here? So we've seen, as you know, Jessica, several rulings by the court that allow Trump's policies to move forward while undergoing the legal process. Just this week, we saw that in immigration enforcement, personnel cases, and even in funding cuts. What does this mean as to how the court will, I'm not asking you to predict what they're going to, how they're going to rule, but what does it mean just in general that these cases are still ongoing and the court is then meant to do something once it actually hits the docket? Okay, I love this question because it allows us to highlight the fact that it didn't used to be this way. There are a lot of these so-called emergency docket, or Justice Barrett, in her interview with Nora O'Donnell, said interim docket or shadow docket decisions. What do we mean by that? Exactly, Vlad, as you just laid out, which is that generally speaking, what will happen is there's some executive order or executive action. It's challenged in the courts below. Sometimes President Trump loses and then he goes to the Supreme Court and says, stay that lower court decision where I lost, pause that. He's asking the court, again, for that emergency relief to push pause. A lot of times he is getting that relief. Now, you said, I'm not going to ask you to predict, but what does this mean? This is not a final ruling on the merits from the Supreme Court. It's a decision about whether or not to pause a lower court decision, but in their decision about whether or not to push pause, they're looking at who's likely to succeed on the merits, on the ultimate question. It tells us a little bit about the court's thinking, but they're not answering the ultimate questions here.

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