The United States Supreme Court’s new term, which began this week, has swiftly positioned itself as a monumental test of executive authority, setting the stage for a judicial reckoning over President Donald Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power. After months of highly consequential but often terse “shadow docket” emergency rulings that largely favored the administration, the justices are now prepared to render full, final verdicts on policies at the core of the President’s agenda. The outcomes of these pivotal cases are poised to either embrace Mr. Trump’s aggressive assertion of executive power or fundamentally curb it, reshaping the constitutional separation of powers for decades to come.
The major thrust of the 2025-2026 term will focus on three main areas of presidential power, each of which has already seen lower courts push back against the administration:
The Tariff Showdown: A Test of Economic Authority
Perhaps the most significant case for the President’s economic agenda is the challenge to his sweeping imposition of tariffs. In consolidated cases, including Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Court will consider whether the President has the unilateral authority to impose wide-ranging tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Lower courts have largely found that the law does not grant the President the power to usurp Congress’s taxation powers by declaring national emergencies for trade disputes.
If the Supreme Court sides with the administration, it would grant the President an unprecedented influence over the economy and validate a muscular interpretation of IEEPA that few legal scholars believed it possessed. A ruling against the President, however, would force the unwinding of a central pillar of his economic policy.
The Power to Fire: Reshaping Independent Agencies
In December, the justices are slated to take up a case concerning the President’s power to fire members of independent federal agencies at will. This legal challenge is another direct assault on a decades-old precedent that requires a “for cause” standard—like neglect of duty—before a president can remove Senate-confirmed officials from jobs at non-partisan bodies like the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Reserve.
The Court has already given a strong indication of its leanings in preliminary rulings, allowing the firings of several agency heads to take effect while the case plays out. Legal experts widely anticipate a decision that will either overturn or drastically narrow the 90-year-old precedent, granting the President greater control over institutions designed to be insulated from political interference. The outcome of a related pending emergency appeal, Trump v. Cook, concerning a Federal Reserve Governor, underscores the high-stakes battle over the independence of the central bank.
Birthright Citizenship and Immigration Policy
A third significant challenge to executive power involves the administration’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship via an executive order. The case, which has yet to be scheduled for oral argument, challenges an executive order that seeks to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.
The administration has appealed lower-court rulings that blocked the order as unconstitutional, flouting over a century of legal understanding stemming from the Fourteenth Amendment and an 1898 Supreme Court ruling. A final decision on this case would settle a long-standing, politically charged debate and could radically redefine the meaning of American citizenship.
A Test for the Conservative Majority
For nearly a year, the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been remarkably receptive to the administration’s emergency appeals, often without offering full legal reasoning. But the new term will force the justices to move from provisional, “shadow docket” orders to fully reasoned, precedential opinions.
This shift presents a critical test for the Court’s reputation. As one attorney who regularly argues before the high court noted, the term “will resolve major clashes between the Trump administration and its critics on core questions of executive authority and perceived executive overreach.”
The decisions in these cases, while focused on specific policies, represent a much broader constitutional inquiry: the ultimate balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. Whether the Court chooses to rubber-stamp the new vision of a “unitary executive” or reassert the traditional checks on presidential authority, the 2025-2026 term is poised to forever redefine the limits of the American presidency.