The Tariffs Case Is About Power and Loyalty on the Right -- Mother Jones [View all]

Will the conservative justices honor the president—or their plutocratic patrons?

Excellent review paragraphs about Sen Whitehouse's Scheme series on Koch tycoons & their flotilla of amicus curiae groups, the court's ruling record, maga justices' loyalty to "doctrine" and money, etc, at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/11/donald-trump-tariffs-supreme-court/

https://archive.ph/zlH9P

"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on almost every nation on earth, in ever-changing amounts, whenever he feels like it. Legally, this is a case about any number of complicated questions and legal doctrines, including
-- the president’s ability to declare emergencies under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act,
-- the court’s novel major questions doctrine,
-- its dormant non-delegation doctrine,
-- the proper venue for challenging the tariffs, and
-- the proper statutory interpretation of IEEPA.

But these questions will almost certainly be window-dressing on a decision driven by how Chief Justice John Roberts and the other five Republican appointees navigate between the two stakeholders in this case: the powerful billionaires and business interests behind the challenge to the tariffs and Trump’s desire to transform the economy into an arm of his personalist rule.

“This is not just a battle over tariffs,” explains Evan Bernick of the Northern Illinois University College of Law. “It is a battle between competing political economies within the American right. And how it works out will speak to just who ultimately has hegemony, who… is shaping the law of the United States.” While Bernick expects the businesses and states challenging the tariffs to prevail, “if they do not,” he says, “that tells me things about the relative power of these competing factions that I did not previously know.”...

“It’s important to look at whatever they end up doing as a reflection of where that business community is right now,” he adds. A decisive victory for Trump might signal that big business will tolerate a tariff regime in which they write multi-million dollar checks to Trump’s ballroom project in exchange for waivers — although they don’t seem to be there yet because, after all, they did help bring this challenge in the first place. A big Trump win could also signal that the justices themselves sense a fundamental shift in where power lies on the right, from the moneyed interests that created the court to the openly authoritarian MAGA movement.

Legally, there are a lot of ways the justices could resolve this case.
But it will be more illuminating to think of the Republican wing not as judges weighing arguments but as mediators seeking a compromise between two competing factions of the same team."