Federal judges are frustrated by defiance from the Trump administration and fuzziness from the Supreme Court

• Federal judges are frustrated with the Trump administration’s defiance and the Supreme Court’s fuzziness, particularly when it comes to following lower court opinions.
• The term “Article 3 judge” refers to a fully vetted and confirmed jurist chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate, as authorized under Article 3 of the Constitution. This distinction is being highlighted in recent discussions about politics and law in the news.
• Articles 1 and 2 of the US Constitution create Congress and the presidency, respectively, while Article 3 creates the Supreme Court and gives Congress the authority to establish “inferior courts” (i.e., lower courts).
• The Trump administration’s actions have led to frustration among lower court judges, who feel that they are being forced to decipher unclear Supreme Court decisions. This has resulted in mistakes and a lack of guidance from higher courts.
• The integrity of the judicial system is at risk when the president and their officials vilify lower court judges and suggest that they can pick and choose which opinions to follow. This undermines the credibility of the judiciary and the rule of law, threatening the fabric of our democracy.

In an emergency hearing before Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on Aug. 31, 2025, lawyers for a group of unaccompanied migrant children from Guatemala asked her to stop the Trump administration’s deportation of hundreds of them back to Guatemala. Concerned that the Trump administration might not follow her order to stop, the judge emphatically repeated her order that temporarily barred the deportations. And then she said something unusual:

“I am trying to do the best I can to fulfill my obligation as an Article 3 judge …”

The Conversation’s senior politics editor, Naomi Schalit, talked with former federal judge John E. Jones III, now president of Dickinson College, about the meaning of the term “Article 3 judge,” why Sooknanan might have used it, and why recent discussions of politics and law in the news have included notably more references to “Article 1,” “Article 2” and “Article 3,” normally terms reserved for discussions of constitutional law.

What is the ‘Article 3’ that Judge Sooknanen referred to?

The meaning is not something that a lay person can necessarily intuit.

It’s quite clear that the course that the Trump administration has taken in the many lawsuits against its policies is to say, “We will obey the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’re going to pick and choose the lower court opinions that we deign to follow.” And of course, Judge Sooknanan’s comment invoking the phrase “Article 3” was meant to say that, the same as a Supreme Court justice, she is a fully vetted and confirmed jurist chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. That’s what’s known as an Article 3 judge, authorized under Article 3 of the Constitution.

So, inferentially, what she’s saying is, “I mean what I say, your administration can’t ignore it as you appear to have done with federal Judge James Boasberg, whose order you appear to have defied to return immigrants you deported. I’m going to do belt and suspenders and be very clear about this and not give you wiggle room because it is not an option for you to disobey the order of an Article 3 judge.”

OK, you’ve described Article 3. Tell us about articles 1 and 2.

Article 1 of the Constitution creates the United States Congress.

Article 2 creates the presidency and the executive branch. It’s somewhat light on details.

And Article 3, notably, creates the Supreme Court, but left it up to Congress to develop and create, as the article says, “such inferior courts.” I don’t love the word inferior; we tend to say “lower courts.”

Because of the caseload at the founding, the Supreme Court handled everything. The Supreme Court justices did what was called “riding the circuit.” They acted, in effect, as lower court federal judges, until business and commerce and the law burgeoned. Congress was then compelled to create district court judgeships and circuit court judgeships to relieve the Supreme Court of the burden of being everything to everybody in the federal courts.

That’s a helpful civics lesson.

I worked with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who had a real predilection for civics education. One of her comments always resonates for me, that civics is something that has to be learned and relearned because it’s not stamped on our DNA.

In a recent NBC story headlined ‘Some Republicans object to Trump’s move to cancel spending, warning of a shutdown,’ Sen. Kevin Cramer from North Dakota said he wants spending decided not by the president but by Congress in a bipartisan appropriations process. ‘I think that Congress has every right to defend its Article 1 role,’ he said.

Constitutionally and by custom, Congress has the power of the purse. The president can propose a budget, but it has to be passed by Congress. And it’s quite clear that, in this Trump administration, Congress is abdicating its Article 1 powers, being compliant and dormant in allowing the president to cancel otherwise-allocated funds repeatedly. If Congress would flex its muscles under Article 1, this wouldn’t be happening.

And back to Article 3 news: There’s been some charged back-and-forth between federal judges and two Supreme Court justices over criticism of lower court judges. And 10 federal judges criticized – anonymously – the Supreme Court’s handling of the Trump cases in the so-called ‘shadow docket’ because the rulings were so brief they couldn’t take direction from them. Is this all normal?

There’s rank frustration on the part of lower court judges. The Supreme Court is forcing lower court judges to decipher meaning from Supreme Court decisions as if they’re the Rosetta stone. They are so abbreviated and less than clear that it’s maddening. Having toiled in the lower courts, the worst situation you could have is a lack of guidance from higher courts, and then you have to guess. When you have to guess, you make mistakes, and that’s the frustration you see.

I think there is a duty on the U.S. Supreme Court to not rubber-stamp lower court judges, of course, but also to have some comity with lower court judges who are struggling through this plethora of cases that have arisen because of the Trump administration flooding the zone.

What does this conflict over courts and judges mean to the average person?

The integrity of our system of justice and the judicial system is based on the trust that people place in the jurists that populate that branch, the third branch of government. And as Alexander Hamilton said, the judiciary has neither the sword nor the purse, so it is the credibility of the judiciary that, at the end of the day, carries weight.

And when the president and highly ranked officials in his administration vilify lower court judges the way they have, and if the president says that he can pick and choose among lower court opinions, then I think you know, necessarily, his followers may think that they can do the same. That is not helpful to the rule of law and to our democracy. In fact, it tears at the fabric of our system.

John E. Jones III is affiliated with Keep Our Republic’s Article Three Coalition.

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