Fed­er­al courts have the author­i­ty to hear cas­es hav­ing to do with the Con­sti­tu­tion, fed­er­al laws and treaties. The courts also hear cas­es where the U.S. is a par­ty. Two dif­fer­ent arti­cles in the Con­sti­tu­tion cre­ate fed­er­al judge­ships: Arti­cle 1 and Arti­cle 3. 

Arti­cle 3 estab­lish­es most judge­ships, Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Vir­ginia Het­tinger said, includ­ing judges of fed­er­al dis­trict courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. 

“Arti­cle 3 judges: pres­i­dent nom­i­nates, Sen­ate con­firms,” Het­tinger said. “The Con­sti­tu­tion says that their term shall be in good con­duct, which has come to be inter­pret­ed as life­time tenure.” 

Arti­cle 1 courts are cre­at­ed by Con­gress and oper­ate sep­a­rate­ly from the Arti­cle 3 courts, Het­tinger said. They are usu­al­ly cre­at­ed to deal with spe­cif­ic issues. Exam­ples of these courts include the U.S. Court of Appeals for Vet­er­ans Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the U.S. Tax Court, accord­ing to the U.S. Courts web­site. These jus­tices don’t have life­time tenure and instead usu­al­ly serve four- or eight-year terms. 

Arti­cle 3 also estab­lished the juris­dic­tion of the Supreme Court, which is its legal abil­i­ty to hear a case.  

Orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion means the case goes direct­ly to the Supreme Court. The court has orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion over cas­es involv­ing ambas­sadors, cas­es between the US and one of the states and cas­es between a state and the cit­i­zens of anoth­er state or nonci­t­i­zens. These cas­es are very lim­it­ed in scope and rep­re­sent the fewest num­ber of Supreme Court cas­es. Accord­ing to the Supreme Court His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, the court usu­al­ly sees one to five of these each term. 

Appel­late juris­dic­tion is how most cas­es get to the Supreme Court. After exhaust­ing appeals in state courts or low­er fed­er­al courts, the los­ing par­ty can seek a writ of cer­tio­rari, ask­ing the Supreme Court to review the case. The Court decides which cas­es to hear, select­ing only a small frac­tion, approx­i­mate­ly 100–150 of the over 7,000 cas­es it receives accord­ing to the U.S. Courts web­site. 

In 1803, the Supreme Court decid­ed a key case that expand­ed its pow­er. In Mar­bury v. Madi­son, the court ruled that an act of Con­gress was uncon­sti­tion­al for the first time, estab­lish­ing the prin­ci­ple of judi­cial review — the pow­er to review laws, exec­u­tive orders and gov­ern­ment actions and declare them uncon­sti­tu­tion­al – which serves as a check on the pow­er of the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branch­es.    

In ear­ly 2025, Vice Pres­i­dent J.D. Vance said on X: “Judges aren’t allowed to con­trol the exec­u­tive’s legit­i­mate pow­er.”  

Het­tinger said that it’s impor­tant for the rule of law that the pub­lic sees the judi­cial branch as hav­ing legit­i­ma­cy as an insti­tu­tion. 

The idea of legit­i­ma­cy “goes to this kind of well of deep reser­voir of good, reserve of good­will… so that even if you don’t like a par­tic­u­lar rul­ing, or maybe even a par­tic­u­lar series of rul­ings, you still basi­cal­ly buy into the legit­i­ma­cy of the insti­tu­tion,” she said. Polit­i­cal rhetoric reject­ing the court’s role in the process, like Vance’s post, can be dam­ag­ing. “I think that the pub­lic is sen­si­tive, and there are things that can hap­pen polit­i­cal­ly that can absolute­ly dam­age the legit­i­ma­cy of the court, can dig into that well of or reser­voir of good­will,” Het­tinger said.   

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong said that state­ments like Vance’s can mis­in­form and con­fuse the pub­lic, lead­ing to more dis­trust in polit­i­cal sys­tems.   

“By just say­ing it, he puts it into the ether and then social media tur­bo charges it,” he said. “It morphs like a virus or mutates into some­thing that starts to have more cred­i­bil­i­ty on social media and before long, even peo­ple of good faith are like, ‘wait a sec­ond, does­n’t that make sense that the pres­i­dent was elect­ed to do a job and we should just let him do his job, right?’”   

While the Supreme Court can serve as a check and bal­ance on the oth­er two branch­es through judi­cial review, this process can take years accord­ing to Con­necti­cut ACLU Legal Direc­tor Dan Bar­rett.

“When the gov­ern­ment does some­thing wrong, it takes a very long time” to get a rem­e­dy, Bar­rett said. “If this gov­ern­ment is increas­ing its vol­ume and scale of vio­la­tions, then there’s going to be broad­er and broad­er chunks of Amer­i­ca that have been wronged and are await­ing or will ulti­mate­ly be denied a rem­e­dy.”  

—by Mikay­la Bun­nell, UConn Jour­nal­ism