It takes a long time for something to get through all the appeals. Getting an injunction to put a stop to something during the appeals doesn't take that long.
The problem in this case is that Congress made such a mess of the law that the lower court judges didn't think the outcome obvious enough to grant the injunction.
> The problem in this case is that Congress made such a mess of the law that the lower court judges didn't think the outcome obvious enough to grant the injunction.
"On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade dealt an early blow to that strategy. The bipartisan panel of judges, one of whom had been appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the law did not grant the president “unbounded authority” to impose tariffs on nearly every country, as Mr. Trump had sought. As a result, the president’s tariffs were declared illegal, and the court ordered a halt to their collection within the next 10 days."
"Just before she spoke, a federal judge in a separate case ordered another, temporary halt to many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, ruling in favor of an educational toy company in Illinois, whose lawyers told the court it was harmed by Mr. Trump’s actions."
The appellate court decides whether to stay the injunction based on how likely they think you are to win more than which docket they think the Supreme Court is going to use. Cases going on the emergency docket are not common.
> If multiple appeals courts thought this case was a winner for the administration, we have an even bigger problem.
Do we? The law here was a mess. Prediction markets didn't have the outcome at anything like a certainty and the relevant stocks are up on the decision, implying it wasn't already priced in -- and both of those are with the benefit of the transcripts once the case was already at the Supreme Court to feel out how the Justices were leaning, which the intermediary appellate court wouldn't have had at the time.
> Sure. But some of them look clearly destined for it.
It's not a thing anyone should be banking on in any case. And if that was actually their expectation then they could just as easily have not stayed the injunction and just let the Supreme Court do it if they were inclined to.
That wouldn't explain the prediction markets thinking the administration had a double digit chance of winning. The sure things go 99:1.
> Hindsight is, as always, 20/20.
It's not a matter of knowing which docket would be used. Why stay the injunction at all if you think the Supreme Court is going to immediately reverse you?
"Though he normally aligns with Thomas and Alito, Gorsuch may be more likely to vote against Trump’s tariffs than Kavanaugh is, according to Prelogar. “It might actually be the chief, Barrett and Gorsuch who are in play,” she said."
"During the argument, several Justices expressed skepticism about the IEEPA expanding the President’s powers to encompass the ability to set tariffs."
This was the widespread conclusion back then; that the justices were clearly skeptical and that the government was struggling to figure out an effective argument.
As pointed out in other comments this process is entirely by choice of the court. In other cases where they just felt like ruling on something they have put things on their emergency docket and ruled on them immediately. Letting this situation ride for a year was a choice by the court.
Not doing something you could have done is frequently less of a choice and more of a lack of bandwidth to simultaneously consider everything which is happening at the same time. The vast majority of cases don't make it onto the emergency docket.
Many reasonable people would argue this was significant / enough of an emergency to justify devoting that bandwidth, even by the standards of the Supreme Court.
