Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked about the timetable for the tariff case before the Supreme Court.
In a highly sympathetic interview on CBS Mornings promoting her new book, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by co-host Vladimir Duthiers about the timetable for the tariff case before the Supreme Court:
DUTHIERS: I think people want to know, why is it taking so long to reach the decision on tariffs?
JACKSON: There are lots of nuanced legal issues that the court has to thoroughly consider. We had oral arguments, as we normally do in cases, and people may not be familiar with the court’s process, we actually deliberate over a period of time where each of the justices decides how they feel about the issues and rights, and it takes a while to write–
DUTHIERS: That’s the answer, you’re still writing, you’re still deliberating–
JACKSON: We — the court is going through its process of deliberation. And you know, the American people expect for us to be thorough and clear in our determinations, and sometimes that takes time.
On the one hand, this is a pretty bland description of the process. On its face, it doesn’t give away anything about how the case is going; it just describes how the Court handles big, complex cases. On the other hand, it’s still more than the justices usually say about pending or potential future cases; when the discussion turned next to Donald Trump’s talk of nationalizing elections, Jackson shut down the line of inquiry entirely. The tariff case, because it has so much potential to move global financial markets, is unusually closely scrutinized for signs of both its timing and outcome. Yet, Jackson — who has not been shy about playing to the progressive peanut gallery and blasting her colleagues for what she called “Calvinball” in deciding what issues to reach and when to reach them — felt compelled to give a patient answer that sent a message of “calm down, we’re just doing our jobs as usual here.” That’s not what you would expect if Jackson is boiling up to an angry dissent complaining that the majority is up to something unusual on the case’s timing or outcome.
Jackson’s semi-non-answer looks to me like further confirmation that the people equating the deliberate pace of this decision with good news for Trump are grasping at straws. I’ve done a lot of reading of tea leaves on this case, and I’m still where I was a month ago:
I don’t see the path to five votes . . . [but] it’s very possible that the Court fractures along multiple lines in saying no. That alone could produce delay in a decision. It would also not shock me if Chief Justice John Roberts is writing a ruling against the administration but throwing it a bone by slow-walking the outcome, giving Trump more time to hammer out new international agreements and otherwise prepare for the day after losing this case. In any event, the Court is likely to give the administration some time to unwind the current tariff regime, either directly or by remanding the case for a lower court to deal with questions of when the ruling becomes effective. It seems unlikely, on the other hand, that the Court will foreclose all future avenues for other Trump assertion of tariff powers, or that it will do much to address how unjustly paid tariffs can be recouped (an issue that only Justice Amy Coney Barrett really focused upon at argument). There will be answers coming — but probably more questions, too.