Sara Albrecht | 06/24/2026
(National Review)
The tariff case, the Supreme Court’s final decisions of the term, and the nation’s Semiquincentennial all point to the same lesson: liberty depends on limits.
In a few days, the Supreme Court will release its final decisions of the term. Commentators will immediately begin sorting the winners from the losers, tallying ideological victories, and speculating about political consequences. But as America approaches its 250th birthday, there is a more important question: Does our Constitution still have the power to say no?
Over the past year, I watched that question move from civics textbooks to the lives of small-business owners across the country. Family businesses suddenly found themselves paying tariffs imposed under emergency powers that Congress never granted the executive. Many of these businesses were importers with only a handful of employees. They weren’t asking courts to decide whether tariffs were good policy or to substitute their views for the president’s. They were asking if the Constitution still means what it says. The Supreme Court ultimately answered yes.
The Court held that the president could not use emergency powers, enacted by Congress for a specific purpose, to impose tariffs that Congress had never authorized. Whatever one’s views on trade policy, the Court’s decision represented something much larger than a dispute over imports and exports. It was a reminder that constitutional limits still matter.
That lesson feels especially important as Americans prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was a complaint not simply about taxes but about unchecked power. The colonists objected to a system in which one man could exercise authority without meaningful limits and without accountability to the people whom he governed. The Constitution that followed was designed to ensure that no American president, judge, legislator, or bureaucrat would ever possess that kind of power.
Instead, power would be divided. Congress would make the laws. The president would execute them. Courts would interpret them. Each branch would check the others. The result would not always be efficient or satisfy everyone, but it would preserve self-government. This is the genius of the American system.
Too often today, constitutional disputes are framed as fights between competing policy preferences. We ask whether a particular decision favors Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or progressives. We judge constitutional questions on their results. The Founders viewed things differently. They understood that the greatest threat to liberty was not any particular policy but rather the concentration of power. Hence why constitutional limits matter most when they frustrate objectives that we happen to support.
A president who is willing to ignore Congress to accomplish goals that we happen to like can also ignore Congress to accomplish goals we dislike. Power seized today rarely remains confined to the present emergency or political moment. Human nature has not changed since 1776. No matter who occupies the White House, Congress, or the courts, ambition seeks ever more authority. Government officials regularly convince themselves that their circumstances are extraordinary and therefore justify extraordinary actions. The temptation to bypass constitutional safeguards in pursuit of desirable outcomes is as old as the republic itself. But the Constitution’s answer has always been the same: No branch gets all the power. No official gets to decide the scope of his own authority. No emergency supersedes the structure of government established by the American people.
As the Supreme Court issues its final opinions, we would do well to remember these principles. The American experiment has never depended on perfect leaders but on institutions that are strong enough to restrain imperfect ones. And despite the doubt and cynicism that often dominate our politics, the past year offered a reassuring reminder that the system still works. Ordinary Americans can still challenge the government when it exceeds its constitutional authority. Courts can still enforce limits. The separation of powers can still function as the Founders intended. The Constitution does not always give us the answer we want, but it preserves something far more valuable: a government powerful enough to govern yet limited enough to serve a free people. Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, that is no small achievement.
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