Name a Supreme Court decision in the current term that will prove consequential.

One of the most important cases the Supreme Court will hear this year involves President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in American cities. In Trump v. Illinois — on the court’s “shadow docket” — Trump is asking the court to let him deploy out-of-state National Guard units to Illinois to supposedly protect immigration agents conducting raids around Chicago. The difficulty with the Trump administration’s argument that law enforcement needs protection is that a district court judge has released a 233-page, fact-dense preliminary injunction rebutting that assertion. The judge found that much of the alleged violence in Chicago the administration says requires National Guard deployment is being caused by federal law enforcement, not by protestors.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Trump administration, it will give this and all future presidents the authority to deploy the military against Americans on their say-so. If the court rules for Illinois, it will staunch the bleeding, but one can bet the Trump administration will try again to deploy the military in a separate case that we have not yet even heard of.

Devon Ombres is the senior director of courts and legal policy at the Center for American Progress.

Are the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump legal? That is the issue in two cases pending before the Supreme Court: Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections.

It is estimated that about $250 billion in tariffs have been collected in 2025. After a federal appeals court declared most of the tariffs to be illegal, Trump wrote that their invalidation “would be a total disaster for the Country” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.” But challengers to the tariffs claim, and the lower courts held, that the president has no authority to impose the tariffs that are the centerpiece of his economic policy.

Trump claims that he has the authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which accords the president the power to “regulate … importation” in order to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat.” The challengers, however, contend that when Congress means to give the president the power to impose tariffs, it does so explicitly.

Also, Trump contends that he has broad discretion to impose tariffs because they involve foreign policy, where he has great inherent authority. But the challengers argue that tariffs are a tax and the taxing power belongs exclusively to Congress.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

The Supreme Court’s federal Indian law agenda appears to be shifting in important ways. Congressional plenary powers in Indian affairs, a foundational principle that has served as bedrock law for decades, even centuries, could be up for reconsideration.

Congressional plenary power derives less from constitutional text than the sui generis character of federal-tribal relations. The court long has held that Congress possesses the power to manage all aspects of Indian affairs, frequently without the consent of tribal nations.

Justice Clarence Thomas has in numerous writings going back more than two decades attacked the sources and scope of plenary power while also questioning whether tribal nations are indeed “sovereign” under federal law.

Last month, in a dissent to a denial of certiorari in Veneno v. United States, an Indian Country criminal jurisdiction case, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who appears to support tribal sovereignty, suggested that the court’s recognition of plenary power end. Thomas joined his dissent.

The end of congressional plenary power could result in more or less sovereignty for tribal nations, but either way, it would mark a major shift. It is far from certain that more justices will want to reassess plenary power — but if they do, then the court will have plenty of potential vehicles over the coming years.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law and professor of American culture at the University of Michigan Law School.

Sometimes a Supreme Court case is deemed consequential when it changes prior precedent, and sometimes a case is consequential because it suggests a pause in the inertial development of doctrine. This term, that second category could include National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission.

The case asks whether the line of cases limiting campaign finance regulations that began with Citizens United will be further extended. If the court refuses to continue that development, it would represent a turning point — one that could prompt us to look back in horror at what we have done to campaign finance.

The role of big money in our politics has become a shocking trend — not simply because of Citizens United or even Buckley v. Valeo but because of the line of thought that goes back to such canonical First Amendment cases as Barnette and Tinker. They established the principle that the Constitution prohibits not only “abridging the freedom of speech” but also restricting general political expression such as a flag salute or the wearing of a black arm band to protest a war — and finally, if inexorably, the writing of a check, for what could be more consequential for a political campaign than financing it?

It is estimated that in 2024, U.S. campaigns spent $16 billion. This contrasts with the U.K., whose population is a fifth that of the U.S. and spent 1/100 as much.

This appalling development has infiltrated every political institution, weakening the parties and polarizing and ultimately paralyzing Congress. But perhaps most of all, it has injected a cynicism about politics into a generation.

Philip Bobbitt is the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court will determine whether members of “independent” agencies can be removed only “for cause” (malfeasance or incompetence), as held by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935). That 90-year-old case, involving Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of a member of the Federal Trade Commission, held that officials wielding “quasi-legislative or judicial” power are insulated from presidential removal over mere policy differences. A half-century later, Morrison v. Olson (1988) — regarding the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate House subpoenas sent to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne Gorsuch (Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother) — extended Humphrey’s Executor to most high-ranking officials.

At the time, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a prescient solo dissent showing how the infringement on the separation of powers in such cases shouldn’t be a close call. The Supreme Court has thus invalidated restrictions on presidential removal in a series of recent cases — Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), Collins v. Yellen (2021) — and now it’s faced with the agency at the heart of Humphrey’s Executor. And it telegraphed where it was going earlier this year when it stayed an injunction against President Donald Trump’s removal of members of the National Labor Relations Board.

Ilya Shapiro is the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and author of “Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites.” He also writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court has the chance to end so-called independent agencies, bringing all executive branch employees under the direction of the president. This case could rebalance all three branches of our federal government — a Congress that has shriveled into oblivion, a presidency on steroids and a judicial branch that keeps getting pulled into every political fight.

The decision in Slaughter could mark the end of a century-long experiment that changed our constitutional order in which we tried to avoid the messy compromise of representative government in the hope that experts could find the “right” answers to our hardest public policy questions.

That experiment has failed. Large swaths of American economic and domestic policy aren’t controlled by anyone whose name is on a ballot. Congress does less and less as the Federal Register grows and grows. Presidents of both parties rule by executive order. And above all else, it turns out that experts can’t answer our thorniest political problems for us. All the delays and messy compromises of legislation we were trying to avoid are the very things that actually bred stability and lowered the temperature of our political fights.

Maybe after Slaughter, Congress will have no choice but to step up to the plate and do its job.

Sarah Isgur is editor of SCOTUSblog and author of the forthcoming book “Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court.”

Louisiana v. Callais will determine whether states can draw legislative maps that advantage white (largely Republican) voters at the expense of multiracial democracy.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting discrimination — including policies that may not intentionally discriminate on the basis of race but nonetheless disadvantage minority voters. That restriction applies to districting maps that seek to obtain a partisan advantage by spreading voters of color across different districts, ensuring that voters of color are never in the political majority that elects an official. The Voting Rights Act specifically targets these practices, which result in voters of color having “less opportunity than other members of the electorate … to elect representatives of their choice.”

For the last 40 years, the Voting Rights Act has required legislatures to draw districts that take into account whether minority voters have political opportunities. The resulting districts have sent a range of racially diverse officials to Congress, state legislatures and state courts.

Callais might end all of that. The result would be more extreme gerrymandering that disproportionately affects districts with Black and Hispanic political officials. Estimates of the precise effects vary; somewhere between 15 and 50 districts might lose protections and be erased. One study suggests that dismantling the Voting Rights Act could require the Democratic Party to win the popular vote by 5% to 6% in order to control the House of Representatives.

Callais, in short, will determine how democracy works and for whom.

Leah Litman is a professor at University of Michigan Law School.

The most consequential decision of the upcoming term will be Louisiana v. Callais. At issue is whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — which sometimes requires states to draw majority-minority districts to remedy racial vote dilution — remains constitutional. The case confronts a tension of the court’s own making — between the VRA’s ban on racial discrimination and the court’s expanding limits on race-conscious state action.

If the court narrows Section 2 or dismantles it entirely — as the conservative majority appears prepared to do — the consequences will extend beyond the representation of racial minorities. For decades, Section 2 has operated as the only durable federal constraint on majoritarian power in redistricting, requiring political majorities to share meaningful political power with racial minorities. Eliminating this constraint would free states to pursue increasingly aggressive gerrymanders. The loss of Section 2 would be a setback for racial representation, but also for the principle of limited majority rule.

The immediate result of Callais will be profound instability in electoral mapmaking. The longer-term consequence will be more significant: Without Section 2, the task of ensuring political fairness will shift toward structural reforms, including proportional or semi-proportional systems, that can embed minority representation without relying on race-conscious districting.

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer is associate dean for research and faculty affairs and the Class of 1950 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University Bloomington.