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The decades-old SCOTUS case creating a precedent in Trump’s favour
The Algonquin Precedent has already been mentioned a couple times in the arguments this morning. It’s a 1976 case heard at the Supreme Court — Algonquin SNG Inc. v. Federal Energy Administration. So what’s it got to do with today?
In 1975, then president Gerald Ford imposed fees on foreign oil imports to encourage national oil consumption and “move toward independence from foreign sources of energy,” according to a 1976 New York Times article.
Ford ended the fees, which were being challenged in various courts, but still took the case to SCOTUS after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the president had authority to limit imports “only through ‘direct’ methods, meaning import quotas,” according to more New York Times reporting from the time.
But the country’s highest court ruled unanimously in his favour, saying the president has authority to bypass Congress’s powers to impose fees on imported oil as a way of limiting imports for national security reasons.
In a bit of foreshadowing, the Times wrote that the ruling “has substantial importance, in terms of law and presidential power, for it means that supplemental fees could be imposed again.”
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