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Decision levers
AI-measured from their own opinions — each lever cites its cases
Living constitutionalismOriginalism
Trump v. United States [2] grounds presidential immunity in 'constitutional structure of separated powers' rather than evolving norms. Trump v. United States ↗
Supreme Court of the United States decisions from 2025 to 2026. They cover topics such as elections, regulatory matters, criminal procedure, and constitutional issues.
Elections
Addressed matters related to state election boards and procedures.
The case concerned President Trump's removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter (and another Democratic appointee) without cause, despite a statutory provision allowing removal only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance, prompting Slaughter's lawsuit claiming the action was unlawful. The Supreme Court held that the FTC's for-cause removal protection violates the separation of powers under Article II, ruling that the President may remove such officers at will and overruling Humphrey's Executor v. United States to the extent it shielded multimember agencies exercising executive power. The Court reasoned that the Constitution vests all executive power in a single President who must maintain control over subordinates through removal authority, as confirmed by the Decision of 1789, early practice, and Myers v. United States; the modern FTC's extensive rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory roles under dozens of statutes place it firmly within that executive domain.
The case concerned President Trump's August 2025 attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from office for alleged mortgage fraud, which Cook challenged as lacking statutory "for cause" justification and required pre-termination process. The district court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the removal, which the Supreme Court declined to stay. The Court held that the Federal Reserve's statutory for-cause removal protections, viewed against the nation's long history of central bank independence from political control, require meaningful judicial review of the President's cause determination and, at minimum, notice plus an opportunity for the Governor to respond before termination; the Government failed to show it was likely to prevail on these points.
In FCC v. AT&T, the Supreme Court considered whether the FCC’s administrative forfeiture process under the Communications Act violates the Seventh Amendment when the agency investigates carriers such as AT&T and Verizon for mishandling customer location data and issues orders assessing multimillion-dollar penalties without a jury. The Court held that the process is constitutional because forfeiture orders issued under §503(b)(4) do not definitively resolve legal obligations or facts. The Commission lacks authority to compel payment or impose immediate consequences; instead, the Department of Justice must bring a separate civil enforcement action under §504(a), which requires a trial de novo in which a jury makes the ultimate factual determinations. This scheme fits within longstanding Seventh Amendment precedent permitting preliminary administrative findings that remain subject to full jury review before any binding obligation arises.
The case concerned whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, China, and other nations after declaring national emergencies over drug trafficking and trade deficits. The Supreme Court held that IEEPA grants no such authority, vacating one lower-court ruling for lack of jurisdiction and affirming another that struck down the tariffs. The Court reasoned that the Constitution assigns the power to lay duties and tariffs exclusively to Congress under Article I, Section 8, that the President has no inherent authority to impose them in peacetime, and that IEEPA’s text authorizing regulation of “importation” does not clearly delegate this core legislative power, particularly under the major-questions doctrine’s reluctance to infer sweeping delegations from ambiguous language.
The case concerned whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) allows the President to impose tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, China, and other countries as a response to declared national emergencies involving drug trafficking and trade deficits. The Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not grant the President authority to impose tariffs. The Court reasoned that the Constitution assigns Congress alone the power to lay duties and tariffs under Article I, Section 8, that the President has no inherent peacetime tariff authority, and that IEEPA’s grant of power to “regulate...importation” does not clearly delegate Congress’s taxing power, particularly given the Court’s reluctance to find extraordinary delegations in ambiguous statutory text. The Court therefore vacated one lower-court ruling for lack of jurisdiction and affirmed the other in favor of the challengers.
In Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, Congressman Michael Bost and two other candidates sued to challenge an Illinois law permitting election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by election day but received up to two weeks later, arguing that the practice conflicts with federal statutes designating a single election day. The district court dismissed the case, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that candidates have a concrete, particularized interest in the fairness and integrity of the rules governing vote counting in their own elections, including reputational harms from potentially unlawful ballots and the legitimacy of the outcome. The Court reasoned that this interest exists regardless of whether the challenged rule is likely to alter the election result or increase campaign costs, and that requiring candidates to prove such an electoral injury would improperly force courts to make speculative predictions or intervene too close to or after election day.
