The damage is done when the Court decides to create a broad precedent from a very narrow case, because the wider implications are never reviewed or discussed.

It’s particularly discouraging, since the Court, in John Marshall’s day, in Marbury v. Madison, took for itself the power to rule laws unconstitutional… or not. Yes, I know, Wiki Answers, in a variety of posts, lists “Article III” as the source of that power, but the quotes they cite inevitably are completely general in nature and say nothing about decisions of constitutionality… because, face it, there is no suitable citation in the Constitution. The Court, arguably as conservative then as it is now, saw a power vacuum and filled it.