The Grievance Audit holds the modern federal record up against the twenty-seven grievances of the Declaration of Independence. Quote the grievance, quote what the Founders built, lay out today’s record with citations. Terms per Black’s Law Dictionary. Reporting on documents, not legal advice.
The grievance
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” — Declaration of Independence, para. 9 (1776)
A judge who can be fired or defunded by the person appearing before him is not a judge; he is an extension of that person’s will. The colonists had watched the Crown control colonial judges through their jobs and their pay, and they understood exactly what that does to a verdict.
What the Founders built
They gave federal judges the two guarantees the grievance demanded, in a single sentence:
- U.S. Const. art. III, § 1: federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.” Life tenure, and a salary Congress cannot cut. It is a nearly verbatim answer to the grievance.
The terms, per Black’s
- Judicial independence — Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024): the insulation of judges from external pressures, especially from the political branches, so that they may decide cases impartially.
- Administrative law judge — per Black’s, an official who presides over administrative hearings within an agency, with power to decide cases but without the tenure protections of an Article III judge.
- Tenure — per Black’s, the period during which an office is held; here, the security of that period against removal.
The record today
For Article III courts, the grievance is answered — and it holds. Federal judges have life tenure and salaries that cannot be reduced. Presidents rage at rulings; they cannot fire the judge or dock the pay. This is one of the constitutional order’s genuine triumphs, and any honest audit says so plainly: the independent federal judiciary is real, and in 2025 it was the institution that repeatedly told the executive no — on troop deployments (No. 3), on tariffs (No. 8), on removals (below). Life tenure is why it could.
But most Americans never see an Article III judge — they see an executive-branch employee. The nation’s immigration courts are not courts in the constitutional sense. They sit inside the Department of Justice, in the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The roughly 700 immigration judges are DOJ employees, appointed by the Attorney General, without life tenure, and — as the agency’s own structure provides — subject to the “policies and priorities of the governing administration.” They are, almost word for word, the thing the grievance names: judges dependent on the executive’s will for their tenure and their pay. The same is true of the administrative law judges across the agencies whose in-house tribunals the Supreme Court began reining in via SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024) (No. 1).
And in 2025 the dependency was demonstrated, not just theorized. That year the administration fired roughly 100 of the some 700 immigration judges. Whatever the merits of any individual removal, the structural signal is unmistakable — and it is the grievance’s exact mechanism: a judge who rules the wrong way can be removed by the party that appointed him and that appears before him in every case. Bills to move the immigration courts out of the executive branch and into an independent Article I court system have been introduced repeatedly, by members of both parties, and have repeatedly gone nowhere.
By the numbers
- Life tenure + undiminishable salary — the Article III guarantee that answers the grievance, fully intact for federal judges (U.S. Const. art. III, § 1)
- ~700 — U.S. immigration judges, all Department of Justice employees in the executive branch, none with life tenure (EOIR; reporting)
- ~100 — immigration judges removed in 2025 (contemporaneous reporting)
- 2024 — SEC v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court reasserting Article III over in-house agency tribunals
The counterweight
State the other side fairly. Immigration and administrative judges are not meant to be Article III judges — they are executive-branch adjudicators exercising executive power, and it is neither surprising nor illegitimate that the executive supervises them, sets their priorities, and, like any employer, can remove them. Their decisions are not the last word: Article III circuit courts review immigration rulings, so the independent judiciary still checks the system at the top. Presidents of both parties have shaped EOIR to their policy ends, which means the practice is bipartisan rather than aberrant. And the fix — an independent Article I immigration court — is a live legislative proposal, not a constitutional impossibility; Congress could pass it whenever it chose. The grievance, defenders argue, is answered where it counts (the real courts) and merely awaiting a policy upgrade where it isn’t.
Fair as far as it goes. But “these aren’t really courts” is a strange comfort when they are where hundreds of thousands of people go to have their fates decided, presided over by judges the prosecuting authority can fire. The Constitution answered this grievance for the courtrooms it recognized. It left the fastest-growing courtroom system in the country — the one inside the executive branch — outside those protections entirely.
The audit
The 1776 grievance was judges dependent on the executive for their jobs and their pay. The 2026 record splits cleanly in two: for Article III judges, the grievance is answered and the independence is real, the backbone of every 2025 ruling that checked the executive. For the ~700 immigration judges and the agencies’ administrative judges, the grievance is not answered at all — they remain executive employees, removable at will, roughly 100 of them fired in 2025. The republic built one of the most independent judiciaries on earth. It also built, alongside it, a second bench that answers to the boss.
Nemo judex in causa sua — no one should be a judge in his own cause. For the courts the Constitution names, the principle is armored. For the courts it doesn’t, it is a work order no Congress has filled.
Next in the series: transported beyond the reach of the courts — the 1776 grievance, sent to a foreign prison in 2025.
Sources:
- Declaration of Independence (1776) — National Archives transcript
- U.S. Const. art. III, § 1 — good-behavior tenure; undiminishable salary
- SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024) — Article III vs. in-house agency tribunals
- Executive Office for Immigration Review (DOJ) — immigration courts housed in the executive branch
- Just Security — Removing, Replacing, and Pressuring Immigration Judges (2025) — ~700 judges; ~100 removed in 2025
- Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) — definitions: judicial independence; administrative law judge; tenure