The fate of President Donald Trump's tariffs may hinge on whether a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court is willing to accept that the words written in federal statutes might not mean what they plainly say.

As you'd expect, there were a lot of different arguments thrown around during Wednesday's critical oral arguments, where the Trump administration claimed sweeping powers to impose tariffs on nearly all imports while attorneys for a variety of plaintiffs said Trump had overstepped the authority granted by Congress. Overwhelmingly, however, the debate seemed to center on perhaps the most basic of questions when it comes to interpreting the law: Did Congress mean what it said when it wrote the law?

The law in question is the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which t

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