The Constitution gives Congress, and not the president, the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.” The question in Learning Resources was whether Congress, in a 1977 law giving the president some authority to “regulate…importation or exportation,” delegated to the president its power to decide how much imported goods should be taxed. Six justices, including Gorsuch and Barrett, joined a majority opinion arguing that this 1977 law does not permit Trump to levy tariffs because the word “regulate” does not include the power to tax (although, oddly enough, Gorsuch’s concurring opinion includes a paragraph suggesting that the power to “regulate” includes the power to levy tariffs, so it’s not entirely clear that he agrees with the majority opinion that he joined). Barrett imagined a parent who hires a babysitter to take care of her children over a weekend and who “hands the babysitter her credit card and says: ‘Make sure the kids have fun.’” She then imagines that this babysitter uses the card to pay for a trip to “an amusement park, where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel.” According to Barrett, while the babysitter’s decision to take the kids to Disney World may have complied with the parent’s instructions in the “literal” sense, they were not a “reasonable” understanding of what the parent wanted.
Author: Ian Millhiser
Published at: 2026-02-23 23:53:44
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