Jacob Kopnick mentioned CAC’s amicus brief in Learning Resources v. Trump in his recent article on amici in the Trump’s tariffs case:

Other briefs, such as the one filed by the Constitutional Accountability Center, centered on the history of wartime tariff power, whether that power existed and whether it was conferred to the president in IEEPA. One amicus, law professor Aditya Bamzai, argued that wartime powers have historically included the power to tax and that IEEPA should be read to include these powers (see 2509240056).

The Constitutional Accountability Center countered this claim by arguing that it “collapses under scrutiny.” The brief said when IEEPA’s predecessor, the Trading With the Enemy Act, was enacted in 1917, there was “fierce contestation” on the “existence or scope of an inherent presidential authority to impose tariffs during wartime.” And even if TWEA codified a wartime tariff power, history “makes clear that” IEEPA doesn’t confer that same power. “Congress’s bifurcation of IEEPA from the TWEA reflects a deliberate severing of peacetime emergency powers from their war powers origins,” the brief said.

Read the full article from International Trade Today, here.