The Supreme Court appears poised to deliver its most consequential ruling of the term, and Justice Neil Gorsuch may have already written the script. With the Court scheduling opinion releases on three separate days, speculation is intensifying that a decision on President Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs will land soon. Odds on the Kalshi prediction market jumped from 40 percent to more than 70 percent that the tariff decision drops this month after the Court announced its calendar.

It has been 105 days since oral arguments in November. The case sits at the intersection of two principles conservatives have championed for decades: executive authority to protect American interests and congressional power over the purse. Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, spent those arguments making clear he sees the tension, and he wasn't subtle about where it leads.

The One-Way Ratchet

During November's oral arguments, Gorsuch zeroed in on the structural problem baked into nearly five decades of IEEPA jurisprudence. Once a president claims emergency authority to impose tariffs, what mechanism actually claws it back? Gorsuch framed the dynamic as a "one-way ratchet" of power flowing from Congress to the executive. His questions carried the weight of a man who already knows the answer.

What president's ever going to give that power back? A pretty rare president. So how should that inform our view?

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee, pressed the government's lawyer from a similar angle. Her hypothetical was surgical:

Let's say that we adopt your interpretation of the statute. If Congress said, 'Whoa, we don't like that, that gives a president too much authority under IEEPA,' it's going to have a very hard time pulling the tariff power out of IEEPA, correct?

The implied answer: correct. And that is the constitutional problem Gorsuch has been warning about for years. Not that any particular president misuses the authority, but that the architecture of delegation makes self-correction nearly impossible, The Hill reported. The ratchet only turns one direction.

Congress Proves the Point

As if on cue, the House last week voted 219-211 to repeal Trump's Canada tariffs under IEEPA. Six House Republicans crossed the aisle to join Democrats. The measure heads to the Senate, where it needs only a simple majority to pass. Last year, four Senate Republicans joined a similar effort.

None of this matters in practical terms. The president will veto the measure, and the numbers aren't remotely close to the two-thirds majority needed for an override. Gorsuch anticipated exactly this dynamic during oral arguments. His assessment of Congress's ability to reclaim delegated power was blunt:

It's going to be veto-proof.

Three words that capture a constitutional reality decades in the making. Congress can hold symbolic votes from now until the next election cycle. Without a veto-proof supermajority, the legislative branch remains a spectator to authority it voluntarily surrendered in 1977.

Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed the institutional inertia. Rather than push to amend IEEPA itself, he offered this:

I think the sentiment is that we allow a little bit more runway for this to be worked out between the executive branch and the judicial branch.

Translation: Congress will wait for the Court to do the hard work. This is the same Congress that passed IEEPA, watched it expand well beyond its original scope, and now defers to the judiciary to sort out the consequences. The legislative branch built the ratchet, can't unbuild it, and hopes the Court will do it for them.

The Government's Defense

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued during the tariff case that the system works as designed. His position: Congress retains the ability to build political consensus against a declared emergency. He pointed to Congress voting to terminate the COVID-19 emergency as proof the mechanism functions.

What the statute reflects is there's going to be the ability for a sort of political consensus against a declared emergency. Nevertheless, that's a political discipline.

It's a reasonable argument on paper. But the COVID example actually undercuts it. Ending a pandemic emergency after the pandemic had effectively passed required no political courage. Overriding a sitting president's core trade policy, against his veto, while his party controls both chambers, is a fundamentally different proposition. Gorsuch and Barrett both seemed to grasp the distinction during arguments.

Timing and the State of the Union

The Court's calendar creates an interesting backdrop. The State of the Union is scheduled for Tuesday evening, and the Court has opinions slated for that same day, plus Friday and the following Wednesday. Last year, Chief Justice Roberts attended the State of the Union while the Court was sitting on Trump's emergency appeal to freeze foreign aid. The justices released their decision against Trump at 8:59 a.m. the morning after.

Whether the tariff ruling drops this week or next, the timing guarantees it will land in the middle of the political conversation. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, appearing on "CBS Mornings" last week for a book promotion, addressed the wait:

The court is going through its process of deliberation, and the American people expect for us to be thorough and clear in our determinations, and sometimes that takes time.

Jackson cited "lots of nuanced legal issues" and noted that opinions simply take a while to write. Fair enough. But 105 days is a long deliberation for what was treated as an expedited case, and the delay itself signals that the justices are wrestling with something substantial.

The Bigger Conservative Question

This case puts conservatives in an unusual position, and an honest one. The instinct to support executive action on trade is strong, particularly when the policy goals align with protecting American workers and leveraging economic pressure on adversaries. Trump's tariffs serve strategic purposes that conservatives broadly endorse.

But Gorsuch's argument isn't about whether tariffs are good policy. It's about whether a statute passed in 1977 was ever meant to give any president unilateral tariff authority, and what it means for the constitutional order if the answer is yes. This is originalism doing what originalism is supposed to do: asking what the text actually authorizes, regardless of whether the current outcome is politically convenient.

The conservative legal movement spent decades arguing that Congress delegates too much power to the executive branch. The nondelegation doctrine, the major questions doctrine, the fight against Chevron deference: all of it rests on the principle that Congress cannot hand away its constitutional responsibilities and then shrug when the consequences arrive. Gorsuch has been the Court's most consistent voice on this front. He is not going to abandon the principle because the president wielding the power happens to share his nominator.

That's not a betrayal. That's intellectual consistency. And it's exactly the kind of jurisprudence conservatives should want from their judges.

What Comes Next

If the Court rules against the government's broad reading of IEEPA, Congress will face a choice it has dodged for decades. Legislators will either need to explicitly authorize tariff authority under defined conditions, or they will have to accept that the era of open-ended emergency delegation is closing. Speaker Johnson's preference for "runway" will run out.

If the Court upholds the government's interpretation, Gorsuch's warnings will sit in a dissent, waiting. One-way ratchets don't stop turning just because the current hand on the lever belongs to your side.

Either way, the case will define how much power Congress is willing to reclaim, and how much it ever actually wanted back. The answer, based on last week's vote, is: not enough to override a veto. Gorsuch already knew that.