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A good part of the problem is that Congress is, and has been, so deadlocked it's almost impossible for it to pass any significant legislation. And that has handed over a huge amount of power to the courts.
"Hey, you know how there's a small Conservative majority in the Supreme Court? Well after the Civil War, when the Southern states had no political power, we used Congress to steamroll the Supreme Court. So what if we did that again?"...."But the red states do have political power now, so we can't do any of that."...."Yeah...but it'd be cool if we could." This article, in a nutshell.