Yes, it’s a bit surprising. The whole point of a constitution is to provide a groundwork and a set of meta-rules governing how the ordinary rules of society may

Yes, it’s a bit surprising. The whole point of a constitution is to provide a groundwork and a set of meta-rules governing how the ordinary rules of society may be made and modified, and how disputes about those sorts of thing should be resolved. The judiciary is precisely the mechanism for entertaining and deciding these disputes. The odd thing, really, is that it took a decade and a half, until 1803, for the Supreme Court first to find it necessary to tell another of the other branches of government that it had broken the rules.