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Lawyers have long played an outsized role in American policymaking. Almost two-thirds of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were trained in the law, more than half of U.S. presidents have been lawyers, and even today half of current U.S. Senators were practicing attorneys. 

Updated on Oct. 31 at 8:42 a.m.

On Nov. 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a pair of challenges to President Donald Trump’s power to impose sweeping tariffs on virtually all goods imported into the United States. The economic stakes are massive, but the cases are also an important test of presidential power more broadly. 

Here’s a brief explainer on the issues in the cases, how they got to the court, and when the court is likely to act. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, in Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited Inc. v. Burton, the Supreme Court will consider a disagreement among the federal courts of appeals over whether there is a time limit for setting aside a judgment as void for lack of personal jurisdiction – that is, because the trial court did not have the authority to exercise power over the litigant.

The arguments next Tuesday in The Hain Celestial Group v Palmquist probably will sound like a session of a first-year civil procedure course, as the Supreme Court will consider what to do when a trial court improperly dismisses a defendant who would have deprived it of jurisdiction to hear the case.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon asked the litigants in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Illinois to file supplemental briefs addressing the interpretation of the law on which Trump relied in his Oct. 4 memorandum calling up the National Guard.