The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, trying energetically to find a way to give President Trump another historic victory, may not be able to make that happen.  After devoting twice as much time as scheduled to a historic hearing Wednesday on presidential power to impose tariffs, the Court finished with deep doubts on display.

It was evident, throughout a two-hour, 40-minute session, that the majority wanted to find ways to support the charges that President Trump has imposed on good imported from across the globe, but seemed to find that the Constitution itself might stand in the way.

At most, the Trump tariffs had the undoubted – even enthusiastic – support of Justice Samuel A. Alito, and might have the grudging support of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but there was no dependable way to count an additional five votes to make a majority in the President’s favor.

Tariffs have long been a favorite of this President, and since returning to office for a second term in January, he has followed a winding path of imposing sweeping import charges, then cancelling, then modifying them, then reimposing them.  He and his lawyers have claimed that, because there is now an emergency in U.S. trade with countries everywhere, he has the authority to set those rates without any grant of power from Congress – the part of government to which the Constitution assigns the tariff power.

Wednesday’s hearing was a thorough review of U.S. tariff history back to the nation’s 18^th Century founding era, and what emerged – over and over – was the reality that Congress has zealously kept the tariff-setting power largely as its own prerogative, allowing the President to use it only within tight limits.

This focus on history is the point of the conservative majority’s favored approach to interpreting the Constitution these days, and that exploration on Wednesday seemed to return to the same place: tariffs are a form of taxing the American people when they buy foreign-made goods, and it is bedrock constitutional doctrine that this power belongs to Congress.

This is a Court, of course, that last year gave President Trump sweeping constitutional immunity to criminal prosecution for the use of his office’s basic powers, that last year made sure that his run for the Presidency was not derailed by liberal-leaning states, and that throughout his ten months in office in this second term was seldom blocked or limited by the Court.

But Wednesday’s hearing had the distinct feeling that, maybe, the Court was sensing that – this time, at least – President Trump may have gone too far.  Three lawyers appeared before the Court, one for the President and his tariffs, one for small businesses claiming harm from those tariffs, and one from resisting state governments.  The Justices pressed each attorney to focus on the language of federal emergency power laws and on presidential history in the use of those powers.

There were many highlights that reflected the tenor of the Justices’ concerns about the Trump tariffs.  Among the most vivid were from three members of the Court that the President must have on his side if his tariffs are to be upheld: Chief Justice John Roberts telling the President’s lawyer that he had exaggerated an important precedent on presidential power, Justice Amy Coney Barrett exploring how the tariffs already assessed might be repaid by the U.S. Treasury if the President loses the case, and a telling summation near the end of the long hearing by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, succinctly relating why, if the government is to put its hand into the people’s pockets, it must be done by Congress, not Presidents.

If those three wind up against the Trump tariffs, they might well line up on that side with the Court’s three liberal Justices, who left no doubt that they were ready to nullify, wholesale, the import charges: Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.

If those six vote together, that will be a sturdy even if unusual six-Justice majority, even without Justices Alito and Kavanaugh.  The ninth Justice, Clarence Thomas, who often is the most predictable Justice when the outcome is distinctly conservative, was comparatively quiet Wednesday, giving no reliable hints of where he would wind up.

The Court is handling the case on an unusually fast schedule, but the details of the case are very complex so the outcome may not be known for weeks, at least.