The most striking moment in Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Learning Resources v. Trump is not a pronouncement on constitutional law or a parsing of statutory text. It is a quiet, almost invisible structural choice: the Chief Justice tells a story. In a November 2025 ruling that struck at the heart of the Trump administration’s tariff agenda, Roberts deployed a storytelling technique that every writer—not just every lawyer—can learn from. He made the President of the United States the main character of his narrative, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. This is not legal jargon. It is not legalese. It is the oldest trick in the book of good English composition, and it may be the single most underappreciated reason why the opinion is so effective.
The Core of the Conflict: IEEPA, Tariffs, and a 422-Word Masterclass
The case turned on a deceptively simple question: Does the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorize the president to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China? The solicitor general had warned that a negative answer would trigger another Great Depression. The public was being asked to digest a statute of roughly 2,000 words, supplemented by presidential orders that ran nearly 12,000 words. The legal arguments involved separation of powers, textualism, and the major questions doctrine—abstractions that rarely engage anyone outside a law school seminar.
Roberts solved this problem by ignoring the standard playbook of legal writing. In Section I.A of the opinion, he tells a 422-word story. The protagonist is the President. The antagonist is the statute itself. The plot is a clash between executive ambition and congressional limitation. Roberts could have written about the “statute,” the “proclamation,” the “executive order,” or the “tariff regime.” Instead, he writes about what the President did.
How the Chief Justice Uses Actors as Subjects
The technique is deceptively simple. When Roberts sets out IEEPA’s requirements, he does not write, “The statute requires that a national emergency be declared.” He writes, “the President must identify” a threat. Then, “he must declare” an emergency. Then “he” may “regulate . . . importation.” The actor—the President—occupies the subject position of nearly every sentence.
This pattern continues when Roberts turns to the facts. He does not write that “the January Proclamation addressed two threats.” He writes that “President Trump sought” to address those threats. The first threat was “the influx of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China.” The second was “large and persistent” trade deficits. The President “determined” the threats were serious. “He invoked” his power under IEEPA. “President Trump declared” the requisite emergency. “He then imposed” tariffs. Later, “he increased” or “he removed” tariffs. Still later, “the President . . . shifted . . . goods into and out of” the tariff regime.
In the entire section, Roberts used an actor as the subject in all but five sentences. The effect is that the reader never loses sight of who is doing what. The President is tied to a chair at center stage, and the opinion follows his every move.
Why This Approach Works: The Psychology of Characters and Actions
The power of this technique is not mysterious. Joseph Williams, in his classic text Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, identified the principle decades ago: readers look for action in the verbs, but they “want characters as subjects even more.” When a writer fails to name characters in subjects—or deletes them entirely—the reader encounters a “tripping hazard.” The prose becomes abstract, hard to follow, and easy to ignore.
This is precisely what happens when most lawyers write. They reach for abstractions: “the statute provides,” “the executive order requires,” “the question presented is.” These constructions place the concept, not the person, at the center of the sentence. The reader must do extra work to infer who is acting. Roberts, by contrast, makes the reader’s job effortless. He gives the reader a single, recognizable character—the President—and shows him acting in a sequence of events.
What Is the Major Questions Doctrine and Why Does It Matter in This Case?
One of the doctrinal pillars of the case was the major questions doctrine, which holds that Congress must speak clearly when it delegates authority over issues of vast economic or political significance. Roberts used his storytelling framework to set up this argument. The story he told was one of the President unilaterally imposing tariffs on “imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.” The statute, by contrast, allowed the President only to “regulate . . . importation.” The gap between the narrow statutory language and the sweeping executive action was the entire basis for the ruling. By using the President as the subject, Roberts made it clear that the President was not just acting—he was acting far beyond what Congress had authorized. The major questions doctrine was not an abstract legal test; it was the natural conclusion of the story.
The Contrast: How the Congressional Research Service Writes
The difference between Roberts’ approach and conventional legal writing becomes stark when compared to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on IEEPA, published in September 2025. The CRS report covers essentially the same ground as Roberts’ 422-word story. But it does so in five dense pages of abstract prose, replete with footnotes.
Where Roberts writes about the President, CRS writes about “IEEPA empowers.” A 56-word sentence hangs on that abstraction. The next sentence hangs on “statute provides.” The public is reminded that each “new threat . . . requires” certain actions, but the actor—the President—is nowhere to be found. The coup de grace is a block quotation of IEEPA’s central provisions, which the reader must parse without any narrative framing.
CRS does eventually discuss the president’s orders, but the president himself is permitted to “wander on and off stage.” In his absence, the reader must content themselves with massive sentences about the “January Proclamation” or the “February Executive Orders.” The result is a bureaucratic tome—scrupulously accurate, no doubt, but abstract enough and long enough to avoid being read at all.
What Can Writers Learn from This Technique?
The lesson is not limited to Supreme Court opinions. Any writer who needs to explain complex material—whether it is a legal argument, a technical specification, or a corporate strategy—can apply Roberts’ method. The core principle is simple: prefer actors as subjects rather than concepts or abstractions.
This means ruthlessly editing sentences to find the human being behind the action. If you write, “The decision to increase tariffs was made,” the actor is hidden. If you write, “The President increased tariffs,” the actor is front and center. If you write, “The statute’s requirements include a declaration of a national emergency,” the actor is absent. If you write, “The President must declare a national emergency,” the actor is present.
The rule of thumb is this: underline the first seven or eight words of each sentence. Do you see a subject there? Is it a character? If not, is there a “good reason” to choose the abstraction? If there is no good reason, look for characters hidden in other parts of speech—phrases like “the president’s orders” or “the powers of the president.” Invite those characters back onstage as subjects who have things to do.
The Practical Editing Process for Storytelling
Adapted from Joseph Williams, the process is straightforward:
- Underline the first seven or eight words of each sentence.
- Ask: do I see a subject there? Is it a character?
- If it is not a character, ask: is there some “good reason” to choose the abstraction?
- If not, look for characters hidden in other parts of speech.
- If necessary, create a menu of the main characters in your conflict, then invite them back onstage as subjects who have things to do.
Most writers will discover that “good reason” to abandon the actor-as-subject approach arises far less often than they think. The instinct to write abstractly is a bad habit, not a requirement of professionalism.
Why This Technique Is Especially Important in Legal and Policy Writing
Legal and policy writing has a well-deserved reputation for being unreadable. The reasons are many: jargon, legalese, passive voice, and an obsession with precision that often comes at the expense of clarity. But the single most damaging habit is the deletion of actors from sentences. When a statute is said to “provide” something, or when an order is said to “require” something, the reader is left to wonder: who provided? Who required? The answer is always a person—a legislator, a president, an agency official—but the person is erased.
Roberts’ opinion in Learning Resources v. Trump is a direct rebuke to this tradition. The Chief Justice does not write about “the statute” or “the proclamation.” He writes about the President. The result is not just clearer—it is more persuasive. By making the President the main character, Roberts frames the entire case as a story about what one person did, rather than an abstract debate about what a text means. And when the story is told that way, the conclusion feels inevitable.
The Enduring Lesson for Writers in Every Field
The best writers in any field—whether journalism, law, business, or technology—understand that readers are wired for narrative. They want to know who did what, and why. They want characters, not concepts. They want action, not abstraction. Roberts understood this when he wrote the opinion. He could have written a dry, technical document that satisfied every legal convention. Instead, he wrote a story.
The result was an opinion that was not only legally rigorous but also accessible to anyone willing to read it. And in a case that could reshape the global economy, that accessibility mattered. The public needed to understand why tariffs on Canadian lumber and Chinese electronics were being struck down. Roberts gave them a story they could follow—and a President they could hold accountable.
For writers everywhere, the lesson is clear. The next time you sit down to explain something complex, do not reach for the abstractions. Do not bury your actors in passive constructions or bureaucratic nouns. Instead, find the main character of your story, tie them to a chair at center stage, and let them act. Your readers will thank you.
