Five Limitations on the power of the Supreme Court There are five basic reasons why the Supreme Court was seen as relatively weak. The first of these has to do with how a case gets to the Supreme Court. All other cases come to the Supreme Court only through an appeals process. And the Supreme Court can only act when it has a case that permits it to act. Unlike the Congress, which can decide something needs to be done and pass a law to do it, or the President, who can ask for certain legislation and use his media exposure to drum up support for it, the Supreme Court cannot simply decide to make an issue of something or decide to do something on its own initiative.
Someone has to bring it a case.
There are no doubt hundreds of laws on the books that contain provisions that are in conflict with the Constitution and hundreds more that fail to provide equal protection to various groups and individuals. But the Supreme Court cannot simply go through the U. S. Code and various state codes looking for these laws and then declare them unconstitutional. Instead, the Supreme Court must wait until one of us challenges these bad laws at a lower level and keeps appealing the matter until it gets through the hierarchy of courts to the level of the Supreme Court. And we cannot simply go through the codes looking for bad laws and then file suit. We have to be able to show that we were actually harmed in some substantial and individual way by the enforcement of the bad law.