Donald Trump may accomplish one big thing as president, in his second term. He may speed up the judicial process to the point where its decisions are still actually relevant when they are handed down.

I say this after the legal whiplash of the last 24 hours or so, as first two federal courts ruled (independently of each other) that Trump's worldwide tariffs were illegal, and then today an appellate court temporarily halted the injunction (which would have erased all the tariffs Trump announced on "Liberation Day"). So we're now (temporarily, at least) back to where we were before yesterday's rulings, as the appellate court has asked both the plaintiffs and the Trump administration to file their responses in the next two weeks. They could issue a final ruling on the appeal at any time after that. Obviously, no matter which way the appellate court rules, this case seems destined for the Supreme Court in the end, but nobody knows how fast they'll rule on it (if they followed their normal schedule, it'd take at least six months or so for a final ruling, but they may well expedite the case).

The case centers on two separation-of-powers questions: Can Congress delegate their constitutional power to levy taxes (such as tariffs), or is this impermissible... and if they can do so, did they actually do so in the law Trump is citing as the one which gave him the ability to levy tariffs on the entire rest of the world on a whim?

The first ruling handed down in the case was pretty sweeping, arriving in a unanimous decision from three judges of the Court of International Trade -- two of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, and one of whom was appointed by Trump himself. In other words, this was not some random draw where Trump got three liberal judges, no matter how much he complains about "activist" judges.

Their decision was, as I said, pretty sweeping. They ruled that the law Trump cited for his power to levy the tariffs: (1) doesn't even mention the word "tariff," (2) was "an improper abdication of legislative power," and (3) was actually passed to restrain presidents, not give them carte blanche to impose whatever tariffs they felt like for any reason. The law in question, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, was passed in 1977 as part of Congress pushing back at the presidential power to declare national emergencies (along with the National Emergencies Act, which had passed the previous year). This was the post-Nixon era, when Congress was limiting presidential power in a number of different ways.

No previous president has ever used the I.E.E.P.A. to levy tariffs of any kind. And the "national emergency" Trump tried to justify it with is nothing more than a trade imbalance that has been around since 1975. So the three-judge panel of the court unanimously ruled that the law did not authorize "the President to impose whatever tariff rates he deems desirable," and, hence: "The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined." Its reasoning was pretty fundamental: "The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to 'lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,' and to 'regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.'" Congress trying to hand off this power to the president in "an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government." Their reasoning is pretty clear-cut, as you can see.

A second ruling (from a different federal court) was handed down yesterday as well, but it was much more limited in scope, since it came in a case where one business sued to stop the tariffs they were being forced to pay. The judge in this case also ruled that the tariffs were illegal, and that the president does not have the power to "unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy." However, this ruling only applies to the business (a toy company) that sued.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit temporarily paused the Court of International Trade's injunction, and asked both parties to submit arguments before June 9th. No matter what their final decision turns out to be, the case will almost certainly then move to the Supreme Court, since it deals with a fundamental separation-of-powers question.

Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the issue. Right now, legal experts seem to mostly be betting that the plaintiffs will eventually win, since the power to levy taxes is so explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as being a power of Congress. Also, the Trump administration is using a rather novel argument -- that the courts simply have no say in any of this. The president should be allowed to do whatever he wants and pesky judges shouldn't have the temerity to butt in and question any of it, period. This is their argument, in a nutshell. This argument did not impress the Court of International Trade at all, and it's hard to see any other court giving it much weight either, since it really is nothing short of a direct attack on judicial power by the executive branch.

As for how all this plays out, nobody knows at this point. Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, his trade war chaos won't automatically end. There are other laws Trump can use to levy tariffs. It's just that they are more complicated than what he attempted to do on Liberation Day, and they come with built-in restraints (such as a limit of only 15 percent for any presidential tariff, and that they be temporary in nature and only last 150 days). The Court of International Trade even helpfully pointed this out, in their ruling. These other laws also come with requirements that require "lengthy investigations, public notice and comment periods, and Commerce Department reviews that can take months."

There is also a basic constitutional remedy that Trump hasn't even attempted: get Congress to pass a law explicitly giving him the power to wage his trade war however he likes. This would also be challenged in court (for the same reason -- that it is constitutionally impermissible for Congress to abdicate this power), but it would at least show the Republican Congress had approved what Trump is attempting to do right now. This would help Trump in court, since he wouldn't be relying on a law almost 50 years old, but rather on what Congress just passed.

The court rulings will introduce a lot of uncertainty into the next month. June was supposed to be the critical month where other countries finalized new trade deals with the White House, with a deadline of July 9th. If new deals weren't struck by that date, then the Liberation Day tariffs were all supposed to snap back for the countries that hadn't struck new deals. But if you're a member of a trade delegation for another country and you see that the American courts might just make the entire problem go away, it would certainly change your negotiating stance. They might take the attitude of: "Go ahead, levy those Liberation Day tariffs -- we think your own courts will strike them down." And they might wind up being right.

If the tariffs are struck down by the Supreme Court, it is going to lead to a real mess in terms of the bookkeeping. After all, if the tariffs were illegal all along then anyone who paid any tariff during that period should be able to get their money back. Some small businesses were hit with these taxes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, merely because they were unlucky enough to have placed an order with a Chinese company that arrived on America's shores at the wrong time. They would be entitled to get all that money back, if the tax itself was illegal.

So far, this is all happening at lightning speed. Federal courts can take years just to hand down initial rulings, appellate courts likewise take months and months and months to act, and the Supreme Court normally moves with a pace that can only be described as "glacial." But Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs the day after April Fool's Day, and the lower courts are already ruling against him. The appellate court moved pretty much instantly after this decision was handed down, and may issue a final ruling on Trump's appeal before the end of June. The Supreme Court takes the summer off and would normally not even hear the case before next October (at the earliest), but perhaps Trump can get them to move in an expedited fashion during their usual summer break.

This is a good sign all around, really, no matter what the outcome of this particular case may be. There are certainly plenty of other court cases against the Trump administration in the pipeline which deal with other fundamental constitutional questions, and it would be nice if they were all decided on expedited schedules as well. The courts will never be able to keep up with the firehose of actions from Donald Trump, but it's good to see things happening in mere months instead of years.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant