Over the past few years, judges have increasingly indulged in cutesy, gratuitous and inflammatory rhetoric in their rulings. It’s not just about using exclamation marks like a rebellious teeny-bopper, but bluntly calling out the government’s failures, from compliance with orders to factual assertions that were facial lies.

I’ve been critical of the methods, on occasion, but whether such writing is appropriately done is a separate matter from whether it’s ethically proper for a judge to do so, whether you like the rhetoric or not. Renowned ethics prawf Stephen Gillers argues that not only is this ethically proper, but it’s ethically encouraged.

Judges are not limited to their rulings to warn the public of threats to the rule of law and the constitutional order. Ethics rules for federal judges and Supreme Court justices broadly permit them to “speak, write … and participate in other activities concerning the law, the legal system and the administration of justice.”

The rules go even further. They say that judges are “encouraged” to speak publicly on these topics, “either independently or through a bar association, judicial conference or other organization dedicated to the law.”

When judges indulge in extra-judicial speech, they are frequently criticized for two reasons. The first is that it suggests a bias in advance of ruling on cases involving either an issue or party. And, indeed, that can be well be the case, at least insofar as the appearance of impropriety goes.

Speaking out need not suggest that a judge is partial or lead to recusals. To the contrary, the silence of the judges can be interpreted wrongly to imply that all is well.

Need not? Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean that a judge’s words don’t cross the very fuzzy line of partiality. And while silence could be misinterpreted to “imply that all is well,” inferences are the takeaway by others, whereas implications are the intended meaning by the writer. Judges can’t help your inferences from what they don’t write, but they are responsible for their implications.

But what’s a judge to do when the situation is such that orders are ignored or worse, and assertions are deliberate lies to the court? There is a message both sent and taken away that if a party can ignore court orders, then orders mean nothing. Since orders are the only tools a court possesses, the judge is left without any means of affecting a resolution. Is the judge to pretend otherwise? When the order says “do X” and the party fails to “do X,” the court is left with two choices. Either clearly express the failure and refusal to abide by the court’s order or be revealed as an impotent entity, either incapable or unwilling to call the miscreant out.

But given the unfiltered rhetoric in vogue with the Trump administration, yet another dilemma is raised.

Chief Justice John Roberts did just that in March, when, at a Rice University appearance, he said that “personally directed hostility” toward judges was “dangerous, and it’s got to stop.” His comment was welcome, but more is needed.

Granted, Trump adores hurling insults at his antagonists, who are basically anyone and everyone who does anything other than what he wants. He’s regularly called lower court judges “radical left lunatics” and even his own Supreme Court appointees disgraces to their families. When CJ Roberts publicly raised this, was it a challenge to Trump or a defense of the judges and reflection of the danger of violence by the MAGA faithful who believe that these judges hate Trump and are destroying the country, thus making them patriots if they take physical action to save the nation by harming the judge.

Gillers is obviously right about judges having the ethical authority to speak to matters affecting the law, the legal system and the administration of justice. Doing so in a manner that doesn’t cross the line of partiality isn’t easy, but the inflammatory rhetoric being thrown at them makes it increasingly difficult to defend the rule of law without words of similar impact.

When the government violates a court order, a judge must call it out. When a government lawyer lies to a judge, whether intentionally or because that was the information he was fed by his superiors, that too much be called out. These aren’t attacks on Trump, even though Trump and his sycophants will see them as such, but a defense of the integrity of the administration of justice.

That doesn’t mean judges need to get cute about it, or engage in hyperbolic or gratuitously inflammatory rhetoric. It might be fun to do so, or give some visceral sense of resistance, but that’s not their job. What is their job is to decide based on the rule of law, whether it pleases Trump or not, and defend the rule of law when it is under attack. Since the rule of law has been under near-constant attack of late, it’s incumbent on the judiciary to stand up for it. Ethically, they can, they should and they must.