Supreme Court justice's dire 1952 warning has come true: legal scholar

A Harvard-trained legal scholar sounded the alarm Tuesday that President Donald Trump has fulfilled a chilling Supreme Court prophecy from 1952 in which a justice warned that emergency powers, left unchecked, would "kindle emergencies."

Writing in Lawfare, Ben Diamond, a fellow at the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy, argued that Trump's second term has shattered historical norms around the use of emergency authority.

And Congress is powerless to stop it.

“Emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies,” Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1952, wrote Diamond, noting the warning came as the high court banned President Harry Truman from using emergency powers to seize the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War.

"Today, Justice Jackson’s words are more relevant than ever: In February, Chief Justice John Roberts echoed Jackson’s alarm in his opinion invalidating President Trump’s use of emergency authority to impose global tariffs," wrote Diamond.

In just one year, Trump issued roughly as many non-tariff emergency orders as any of his predecessors issued across their entire terms in office, he noted. Trump is on track to issue 6 1/2 times more emergency orders than the average president this century — more than every administration since 2000 combined.

"Justice Jackson's warning has become a reality," Diamond wrote.

Trump declared a "National Energy Emergency" on his first day back in office, then used it to kill renewable energy projects and prop up fossil fuels, canceling $35 billion in clean energy investments in the process. Diamond warned that MAGA activists are also lobbying the White House to use emergency powers to seize elections.

"At bottom, the administration is weaponizing emergency authority, transforming it from a tool for responding to crises into a means of kindling them," wrote Diamond.

With Congress unable to override a presidential veto and courts slow to intervene, Diamond said the judiciary must act before emergency powers become a permanent tool of authoritarian governance.

"Courts should continue to heed Justice Jackson’s prescient warnings and prevent this administration—and all future ones—from eroding the separation of powers under the guise of emergency," he concluded.