The limits of courts against shameless power

By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court has finally given an answer on the legality of Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs”. For a policy mired in constant disputes, that answer itself matters: it reminds the public that a president cannot turn the tariff spigot on at will. But the ruling is closer to stopping the bleeding than curing the disease. It rejects Trump’s use of a certain kind of emergency power to impose “universal tariffs”, rather than declaring in principle that a president can never raise taxes.

The boundary is clear: first, universal taxation must ultimately rest on congressional authorisation; second, if the executive relies on a vague clause to launch a tariff scheme of huge impact, wide scope and far-reaching consequences, it must point to clearer, more identifiable authorisation from Congress.

So it is no surprise that some condemn the decision and others applaud it. Trump and his supporters condemn it; his opponents, including Democrats, applaud it. For the latter, the logic is simple: in the year-plus since Trump took office, his freewheeling use of presidential power has damaged America’s institutional image and eroded its external soft power; the Court’s move seems to show that US democracy still has the resilience to repair itself — good for America, and good for the world. 

Yet do not be happy too soon. The ruling’s weight depends not on elegant prose but on what Trump does next. If he wants, he can repackage the same tariff goal under another statute and press on. And that is what happened: Trump immediately, under another statutory banner, announced a 15% tariff on the world, leaving the Court’s check largely at the level of doctrine while, politically, it is “substantively nullified”.

US law gives Trump this capacity to “switch statutes and keep taxing”, and under the current system, it is hard to stop. Congress can take back delegations, plug loopholes, and even use the budget to constrain the executive. But in fierce partisan conflict, doing so exacts real costs: lawmakers must take responsibility back, face beneficiaries and victims in their districts, face their party base, and face the president’s public pressure on his own party. Most of the time, Congress’s easiest posture is to pretend it is “powerless” — letting the executive decide, the courts to judge legality and the markets to absorb the fallout. The Court’s ruling then becomes a passive check: it can block one road, not all roads.

The founders created separation of powers because they did not trust human nature and did not expect rulers to be morally lofty. They split power into three so that each would find it hard to swallow the others — what Madison called using “ambition to counteract ambition”. Yet they likely did not foresee American politics mutating into today’s condition. Read now, Madison’s line is only half right: ambition can counteract ambition only if ambition still accepts a shared set of norms — at least admitting that some lines must not be crossed.

A system is never an automatic machine. Its operation needs driving forces: Congress must be willing to confront the president; the executive must accept limits; society must treat norms as a bottom line. Once those forces are absent, the system may not collapse at once; forms and procedures remain, power is still called “separated”, but checks and balances weaken — they are too weak to stop a president who disrespects political ethics from pushing power to the limit.

Trump’s problem lies here: he uses power not prudently but to the maximum. He treats rules not as boundaries but as weapons; political ethics not as restraint but as material to mock, trample and turn into mobilisation. Call it character, call it style; it is a governing philosophy: if it can be done, do it; if the other side can be forced to yield, force it; if the factual space of presidential power can be expanded, expand it.

America’s 250-year history has seen moments when the system was strained, even malfunctioning. In war, panic and rupture, power concentrates in the executive; Congress hesitates; courts lag. Many crises later “bounced back”, not because the system is inherently brilliant, but because restraint returned, or interest structures forced parties to redraw bottom lines. Rebounds are never free: they often bring social division, declining trust and rising governance costs.

Trump’s governing style is almost unique in US history: born of polarisation, it also hardens polarisation. Polarisation’s danger is that it turns institutions from common property into factional tools — letting factional victory outweigh institutional credibility, short-term gain outweigh long-term stability. In such a structure, Congress’s checks can fail, not because Congress lacks power, but because it lacks will, or because will is hijacked by partisan interests and electoral incentives. Since Trump took office, outsiders have largely seen this: Congress’s checking of him is weak, sliding from political responsibility into procedural performance.

Public opinion, the “fourth estate”, also looks weak before this kind of president. Traditional restraint often depends on a “shame mechanism”: exposure leads officials to pull back under public evaluation and ethical pressure. Trump’s strategy is to make shame fail. He does not mind media attacks; he even needs them, because they can be translated as “persecution” and mobilised into support. Oversight becomes fuel, not brakes. Public opinion can create noise, but not necessarily restraint.

When Congress does not check and public opinion cannot restrain, the judiciary is pushed to the front, as if it were the last guardrail. This ruling shows the guardrail still exists: the Court can say “no”, and dares to say “no”, driving back into public view the bottom line that “without congressional authorisation, taxation cannot be imposed”. But the judiciary’s weakness is equally plain: it has no enforcement power. It can judge but not execute; strike down one approach but not stop the president from seeking another lawful route; block a specific measure but not replace politics in the work of long-term governance.

A dangerous cycle then becomes unavoidable: presidential expansion — lawsuits — court rulings — presidential detours — more lawsuits — more rulings. The system is not felled in one blow; it is hollowed out inch by inch inside a cycle that still looks like “normal operation”. That is why I say: do not be happy too soon. If the ruling merely yields “Trump switching statutes and continuing to tax”, its real significance shrinks: the Court may clarify the boundary, but that does not make the boundary effective. 

For a boundary to hold, someone must defend it, and the strongest defender has never been the courts but Congress. If Congress, calculating partisan interests, refuses to act, oversight and checks slide into systemic paralysis: what should be blocked is not blocked, what should be pulled back is not pulled back, what should be corrected is not corrected, until only courts remain, issuing fragmented rulings to chase a shifting executive reality.

In the long run, America’s separation of powers may return to balance; US history has shown such resilience. But four years are enough to do severe damage. If guardrails broadly fail during Trump’s term, repairing American democracy becomes harder, because in a more fractured society politics grows used to extreme means. And no one can guarantee the next president will not repeat Trump.

Trump has shown that “pushing power to the limit” can yield marginal political gains — gains that will tempt successors. If so, people will see a system that can divide power but cannot automatically generate restraint; can provide procedure but cannot guarantee political decency; can write boundaries on paper but cannot prevent those in power from pushing every lawful space to its maximum. This is the institutional “fatal flaw” American democracy exposes in the face of Trump. 

So the value of this tariff ruling is not to give the anti-Trump camp a reason to celebrate, but to force a harder question: when a president who does not abide by basic political norms and ethics appears, and polarisation makes it hard for Congress and public opinion to provide effective checks, what can American democracy rely on to sustain its basic form?

What the Supreme Court can do is limited. What will determine whether the US can return to the right path is whether the political system can recover something more fundamental: a willingness to assume responsibility, to pay the costs, and to treat institutions as a shared bottom line rather than a factional tool. In short, those who hold power must relearn restraint and prudence in the use of power.

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