Rule of Law Clinic Files Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Tariffs Case
A bipartisan group of former government officials who served in senior positions across eight presidential administrations filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down President Trump’s invocation of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs, which they say are unlawful.
The former officials are represented by the Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic at Yale Law School and by Susman Godfrey LLP.
In the Oct. 24 brief, the officials, who have decades of combined experience in national security, foreign policy, and economic affairs, argue that the president has failed to meet the clear statutory requirements Congress imposed for invocations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Oral argument in the consolidated case is scheduled for Nov. 5, 2025.
Read an appendix to the amicus brief
According to the brief, to accept the use of IEEPA in this case would grant the president “standardless, unilateral tariff powers” that would “dangerously shift the constitutional balance between the legislative and executive branches” and invite precisely the kind of executive overreach the Constitution’s framers sought to prevent.
Officials who signed the amicus brief have addressed national emergencies at the highest levels of the U.S. government dating back to the Ford administration. Signatories include a former federal judge, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, two former ambassadors, a former White House counsel, two former State Department legal advisers, a former deputy secretary of state, a former acting attorney general, a former general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, a former head of import administration at the Department of Commerce, and other former senior foreign policy and national security officials.
The consolidated case of Learning Resources v. Trump challenges President Trump’s 2025 tariffs imposed under IEEPA.
The case arises from two national emergency declarations: (1) a February 2025 executive order imposing tariffs based on the alleged failure by Canada, China, and Mexico to address fentanyl trafficking, and (2) an April 2025 order imposing global “reciprocal” tariffs allegedly based on the U.S. trade deficit. After the Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that IEEPA does not authorize such tariffs, the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
According to amici, the text, structure, and legislative history of both the National Emergencies Act and IEEPA exude distrust of — not blind deference to — presidential invocations of emergencies. Through IEEPA, Congress imposed clear statutory conditions that restrict presidential emergency powers, permitting their use only in response to “an unusual and extraordinary threat.”
The president has failed to meet that standard here, according to the brief.
The signers of the brief show that far from being either unusual or extraordinary, the U.S. trade deficit has been a “persistent” condition for more than 50 years, predating IEEPA's passage and exemplifying precisely the kind of “normal, ongoing problems” that Congress considered insufficient to trigger emergency powers. Likewise, while amici acknowledge the threat posed by fentanyl trafficking, the administration’s own statements and statistics prove that it is a long-term and diminishing problem — not an “unusual and extraordinary” threat within the meaning of the statute.
The administration’s failure to meet IEEPA’s “unusual and extraordinary” threat requirement alone invalidates these tariffs, according to the brief. Beyond that threshold violation, the president’s statements and actions also demonstrate that he invoked the trade deficit and narcotics trafficking as pretexts to pursue other objectives, they write. By the president’s own admission, his “tariffs are about making America rich again,” making clear that the “plainly manufactured” threats serve as “‘pretext[s] for usurpation’ of the constitutional balance of powers and IEEPA’s statutory criteria.”
The Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic was founded in 2016 by Professor Harold Hongju Koh and William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law Michael Wishnie ’93 to address threats to the rule of law. The clinic is now led by Koh, Aharon Barak Distinguished Rule of Law Fellow Bruce C. Swartz ’79, Clinical Lecturer in Law Sonia Mittal ’13, as well as Visiting Lecturers in Law Eugene Fidell, Margaret Donovan, and Justin Cole ’23. Susman Godfrey was co-founded by Steve Susman, a legendary trial lawyer and tireless champion of the rule of law.
Current Yale Law School students and clinic members who worked on the brief include Madeline Babin ’26, Saavni Desai ’27, Samantha Kiernan ’26, Ananya Agustin Malhotra ’27, Pete Nelson ’27, Jake Reagan ’26, Summia Tora ’27, and Julian Watrous ’27. Other students and clinic members contributed to research leading to the brief, including Kate Ahrens ’27, Kate Davidson ’27, Caroline Kapp ’27, Gwyn Reece ’27, Harry Seavey ’27, and Chaka Tellem ’27. Attorneys Jacob Buchdahl and Jillian Hewitt of Susman Godfrey LLP also represent amici.
