A guide to what may be legal or illegal or in-between. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/u... - ThreadSky

upshot.nytimes.com • 2 days ago

A guide to what may be legal or illegal or in-between.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/upshot/trump-executive-orders-legality.html?smid=bsky-upshot

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jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

Hey y'all. This is a useful feature. But this blurb needs to be corrected. There are some statutes that give tariff authority for NatSec reasons. But it is not at all clear that IEEPA, used here, is one of them, and there are reasons to think the tariffs conflict w/ specific statutes. 1/

jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

I know it's confusing. Trump 1.0 relied on different statutes, also dealing with NatSec, to impose tariffs. But in Trump 1, he did not rely on IEEPA, except at one point to threaten Mexico. The (il)legality of that move was debated then. 2/ https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/legal-authority-behind-trumps-new-tariffs-mexico

jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

Now, the admin is making use of IEEPA for tariffs. This is new. As Claussen & Anderson note in the above article, there is little precedent under IEEPA, although the admin could rely on a 1971 lower federal court ruling under a different statute for some support. Legality is unclear at best. 3/

jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

More recently, Peter Harrell argued that IEEPA does not grant tariff authority. If Peter is right, then your suggestion that the tariffs are "more likely to fall within mainstream understandings of presidential power" is wrong. 4/ https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-case-against-ieepa-tariffs

jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

Addar Levi has articulated additional legal arguments against the IEEPA tariffs. Her two main points are more procedural (& ftr I agree with only one), and thus *could* fall into your oblique category of "unusual or subject to legal challenge." 5/ https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ieepa-tariffs--many-legal-challenges

jbentonheath.bsky.social•2 days ago

But that just means that the distinctions you draw in this piece are themselves troubled. Many of the actions the piece highlights as being "within mainstream understandings of presidential power" are actually legally troubling in various ways, and there is no reason not to foreground that. 6/

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