Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has set its lowest bar for constitutional review to economic regulation. The court’s rational-basis test doesn’t require policymakers to be wise, or even reasonable. It requires only rationality— an acceptable policy goal combined with rational actions to achieve that goal.
Yet even that deferential standard has limits. And the reasons for those limits — grounded both in history and modern economic theory—have particular force in the modern political climate. While court challenges to these tariffs have primarily relied on statutory limits to presidential authority — including a lawsuit filed this week by a dozen states — rational-basis review has a significant role to play in that litigation because it complements and clarifies why Congress imposed such statutory requirements in the first place.
