The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Donald’s Trumps sweeping tariff agenda in a 6-3 decision last month is momentous.
Pundits predict what it means for the president’s economic agenda. Legal scholars debate what it means for the respective roles of the president and Congress under the Constitution. These are consequential issues that will have a profound impact on the nation.
But one paragraph, tucked in the 170 pages of the justices’ opinions and dissents, may be the most important element of the Court’s decision. In this paragraph, Justice Neil Gorsuch teaches us a powerful lesson about the most important feature of the government the framers created.
Gorsuch agreed with the majority that Trump had failed to secure the Congressional approval needed to impose the challenged tariffs.
He then wrote separately to those who found this decision maddening because it blocked the president’s ability to act forcefully and decisively.
“All I can offer them,” Gorsuch writes, “is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people … are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.”
That process includes debate and — yes — compromise among lawmakers. It can seem slow and arduous and frustrating to those who expect that an electoral victory will mean political domination.
Gorsuch reminds us that this frustration is not a bug in the Constitution. It’s actually its most important feature. “The deliberative nature of the legislative process,” Gorsuch notes, “was the whole point of (the Constitution’s) design.”
It is through this process that “the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives.”
It was the view of the framers that the legislature is where “deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.”
Gorsuch’s insight recognizes that the Constitution was designed for and thrives within a pluralistic society.
Indeed, this is the type of society that the Constitution envisions for our nation.
The framers did not view pluralism as a problem to be overcome through forceful legislation or oppression. They designed a system that shows us how to work together even while we disagree.
As the political theorist Yuval Levin shows in his important book “American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation — and Could Again,” the Constitution aimed to “create” common ground in our society by “compelling Americans with different views and priorities to deal with one another — to compete, negotiate, and build coalitions in ways that drag us into common action even (indeed, especially) when we disagree.”
The delegates at the Constitutional Convention represented colonies of different sizes, economies, religious commitments and regional backgrounds.
The Constitution’s elaborate architecture of separated powers, bicameralism and federalism was not accidental. It was the framers’ way to ensure that no one of these factions would govern alone or too quickly to the detriment of the others.
For government to work under this system, all must engage in the hard work of persuasion and coalition building. Only when proposed legislation achieves broad support will it become law. Under this regime, Gorsuch notes, such legislation will “tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day.”
This system requires hard work from “we the people.” It asks that we resist the temptation to treat politics as a zero-sum contest in which our side must win completely and the other side must lose entirely.
It asks that our elected representatives do the slow, unglamorous work of persuasion and coalition-building rather than looking to a president to deliver results by fiat. And it asks that ordinary citizens bring to their political engagement something that does not come naturally in our polarized age: a willingness to deal honestly and charitably with those who see the world differently.
To say we are a pluralistic society is not to say that we must believe all values are equal or that moral conviction has no place in politics.
It is to acknowledge what the founders knew: that Americans have always disagreed, deeply and sincerely, about the most important questions. The Constitution was designed with that reality firmly in mind.
Rather than assuming that one faction would eventually win and govern alone, the framers built institutions that force Americans with different convictions to nonetheless produce shared outcomes. They knew that this would be hard work, and that as Benjamin Franklin warned, it would require our best efforts to “keep” our republic.
This wasn’t just a concession to political reality. They had in mind a grand vision for what America could be — a vision for a new type of nation that embraced diversity and cherished pluralism. As Eboo Patel, one of America’s leading voices on pluralism, has written, “Diverse cultures are the secret to America’s strength.”
The framers thought so too. They believed that a nation capable of governing itself across deep differences was stronger for it. Diverse perspectives, when channeled through deliberative institutions, produce more durable and wiser outcomes than any single faction could achieve alone. Pluralism, in other words, is not a weakness; it’s our greatest strength. It’s America’s superpower.
This may sound like high-minded idealism. Maybe we could work with the other side — if only they agreed with us! President Dallin H. Oaks, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has noted that part of the genius of the Constitution is that it “requires us to accept some laws we dislike, and to live peacefully with some persons whose values differ from our own.”
President Oaks tells us precisely how to do this: “On contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify.” That is the template by which we should measure our engagement in public life. That’s how we support and defend the Constitution. To engage charitably with political adversaries, to negotiate in good faith, to seek workable solutions rather than total victory are not signs of weak moral conviction but of mature faith applied to civic life.
At the end of his opinion, Gorsuch offered a reminder worth pondering. The legislative process, slow and frustrating as it can be, “helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the nation’s future.”
Then he added something that should give all of us pause, whatever our politics: he noted that one day, perhaps soon, “the tables will turn.” Those in power will be on the outs. Then, “those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.”
Gorsuch’s words may prompt us to ask: Are we building the kind of civic culture we would want in place when the tables turn?
President Oaks has given the nation the formula for building that civic culture. It begins with the willingness to moderate, to unify, and to recognize our political adversaries not as enemies to be defeated but fellow citizens with whom we must — and can — forge a common future. The Constitution shows us how this work is possible.