My point was a bit more light-hearted. Bickel's book is known as an explication of why the Supreme Court is the least dangerous branch in our government and why it should remain passive as a branch when deciding cases (for the most part).
Regarding your civics lesson, I fully understand what the Supreme Court is supposed to be. I took civics seriously as a young man (I smile typing that) and got good grades in the civics side of classes, minored in Poli Sci, worked in D.C. for a political think tank, and then went and graduated from law school, passing the bar. I know exactly what merits the branch is supposed to bring to our governance. What I do not cavil to is your description or characterization of my post as not recognizing the checks and balances, nor do I need a reminder of what the professor in Election keeps saying throughout the movie to that year's bored students. It is precisely that the judiciary has no effective check on it, and is restrained only by itself -- that is my problem with it. Like I said, I'm not sure I have a solution to it. But it is certainly the most aristocratic in dress, in form, in function, and Article III of our Constitution managed to set aside a removal of democracy from democracy's bed to a degree. I think of the arguments made by Brutus in the Anti-Federalist papers about the inevitability of judicial review and its anti-democratic origins and how it would take form and shape in practice to its defense by Hamilton in Federalist 78.
It reminds me of reading Storing's What The Antifederalists Were For, his book about the papers that prompted a brand new rush of scholarship in the seventies into the study of these papers, leading him to produce six-seven volumes of analysis (or so I think) before his untimely death (I did not know until just recently he shares my alma mater.) I dunno. I've read the aforementioned book, unlike Bickel's, because it seemed to me that his theories were at least plausible. I've also read Freedom and The First Amendment by Walter Berns, Storing's friend at AEI, both of whom wrote numerous books on the Constitution. That's actually a pretty conservative cast of who's who in the legal world. Berns and Robert J. Bork used to "hang out" there, too.
So, it's not that I don't understand the American project. It's more likely you were going to read my post and bloviate on a message board to someone who knows uniquely all-too-well that the workings of our government today differ slightly than a cursory read of civics jingoism. Good day.