Rights Over Rules

Comment posted to WaPo article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/05/supreme-court-trump-tariffs-immigration-economy/

Especially with the President and the Courts acting the way they are, we need our lawyers to put the best arguments in front of the Courts. The tariffs-by-executive-decree case raises big questions about taxpayer rights, and about so-called emergency declarations.

Customs is literally collecting taxes that no law requires American importers to pay.

Unfortunately, none of the plaintiffs in any of the tariff cases, including 20 state AGs, seem to have made any claim of their clients’ rights as taxpayers.

A variety of editorials by Rand Paul, Laurence Tribe, and others, pointed out the obvious “taxation without representation” argument. But they haven’t said the next obvious thing, that taxes without representation violates fundamental rights.

We need our legal profession, and all who would defend democracy and the rule of law, to connect their ideals to words, and to speak up now. As Franklin famously said to his neighbor after the Constitutional Convention, we have “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Next year as we celebrate 250 years of Independence, will we have given it all away out of plain ignorance?