In a new post for the Yale Journal on Regulation’s “Notice & Comment” blog, Professor Elena Chachko argues that Learning Resources v. Trump is about far more than just whether the president has the authority to impose tariffs. Previewing a forthcoming paper, Chachko writes the case is part of what she calls the “new emergency law” — an emerging body of cases in which courts are more willing to scrutinize executive reliance on broad emergency statutes.
The post connects recent litigation involving tariffs, internet platform regulation, immigration, border wall funding, COVID-era measures, and student debt relief, arguing that courts are increasingly skeptical when presidents use emergency statutes to pursue major domestic regulatory goals. Chachko also highlights “authority-matching,” her proposed approach for interpreting emergency statutes. The approach asks whether a narrower, more specific statute ordinarily governs the action at issue — and if so, presumes that Congress did not intend the broader emergency statute to bypass that more specific scheme.
The best solution for the executive branch’s creeping usurpation of emergency powers, Chachko concludes, is congressional action to take some authority back. That’s unlikely, she writes, in our era of growing polarization and declining legislative activity.
“The collapse of congressional oversight of emergency powers makes the judiciary the only available institutional check on aggressive use of emergency statutes for domestic regulation,” she writes. “Learning Resources shows the courts are willing to play that role.”