N.Y. Times Highlights Impact of Professor Amar's Scholarship on Supreme Court Tariff Opinions

An analysis by Adam Liptak in the New York Times on Feb. 26, delving into the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and writings in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump --  the 6-3 decision invalidating President Donald Trump's assertion of broad tariff powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 --  featured a discussion of how Justice Neil Gorsuch's important opinion in the case drew on the academic and amicus writings of Professor Vikram Amar. 

In particular, the Times' analysis explored Amar's ideas concerning the so-called "non-delegation doctrine," the "major questions doctrine" and the "retrieval problem" (the difficulty Congress encounters when it tries to retrieve power that has been conferred onto the president, on account of the president's veto).

The relationships between these concepts -- relationships Amar explored in a law review article in 1996 and discussed in a friend-of-the-court filing in Learning Resources, Inc. -- have implications not just for the tariffs case and other disputes directly involving the scope of presidential authority, but also when the court seeks to fashion remedies in cases such as Trump v. Slaughter, where a majority of justices are expected to invalidate Congress' attempt to limit the President's power to remove commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission.

As Liptak put things, the cluster of ideas surrounding the "retrieval problem" that Amar has identified means that President Trump should be disappointed “a lot” by his loss in the tariff case.

Vikram Amar, one of the nation's most eminent and frequently cited authorities in constitutional law, federal courts, and civil procedure,  holds the Daniel J. Dykstra Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He returned to UC Davis as a distinguished professor of law in 2023 after serving for eight years as dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law.