Reality tells us you missed something. The role that the review of law plays.

To understand the point, Case Law (English Law) is jurisprudence not based on a constitution, but rather on previous judgements by judges. As such, Case Law is not built on a rock, but rather on muddy land that somewhere in the process is reclaimed from the mud.

Judges still sit above all legal manners, but use previous decisions to keep their heads above the muck.

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In a nation with a Constitution, the Constitution is the bedrock. Judges do not sit above the Constitution. At best they sit next to it, but in general they sit underneath the Constitution.

That is part why the USA is a confusing place. Judges are accustomed to rule per Case Law, and yet among all the muck we have a bedrock, the US Constitution. Even today, the US Supreme Court can at times sit above the US Constitution because it treats it as Case Law.

No judge should ever sit above a Constitution. No judge can change a Constitution.

The politicians are given the right to change the Constitution, no one else. Yet our politicians sit on their hands; they force the judges to judge where they are not allowed to judge because our political system is not aligned with our US Constitution.

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The States did not abide to the Fourteenth amendment, and they started writing laws and regulations that took away the privileges of citizens of the United States.

Therefore, we have -on paper- a constitution, but in reality our politicians and judges have thrown the baby out with the bathwater a long time ago.