This is actually a very fair question.
—For starters, the Supreme Court’s power is only the perception of power. It has no agency to enforce its rulings. The Justice Department is independent of the court, and no law enforcement agency answers to the court. [They have a police force of roughly 200 officers, but they exist largely to protect the court justices themselves.] Because the President appoints (and fires) the Attorney General and FBI Director, and could theoretically even dismiss the head of the Supreme Court’s police force if they were overzealous, the court itself has no concrete ability to do anything.
—The “checks and balances system” of the constitution created the judiciary branch third of three, meaning last. It was meant to exist as a check on runaway federal power—not as the unelected, lifetime appointed oppressor of America.
The way this current court interprets itself, congress doesn’t regulate them (Roberts has refused congressional interview requests), ethics don’t apply to them (Thomas, Gorsuch, or Alito have little to fear when no judge has been impeached…ever), established law is for suckers (Roe vs. Wade), and there is seemingly no aspect the President has actually been elected to oversee—like EPA regulations.
—The court’s legality lies in its legitimacy, and this current court is not legitimate.
It’s only the second time in U.S. history a majority of the SCOTUS has been appointed by Presidents that lost the popular vote (the other time was in the 1880’s when life expectancy was much lower and most of the court changed within a decade), and may not have even won the EC. We couple with this shenanigans in the Senate (where Merrick Garland was denied his rightful seat), and the extreme historical reluctance to remove a judge from the court, creating a safe haven for a corrupt judge to serve forever.
This creates a situation where Alito and Roberts would not be on the court if a previous conservative SCOTUS didn’t stop a lawful recount in Florida ensuring W. Bush victory…We then add to that the unprecedented year-long tactics used to deny Garland his seat which is erroneously occupied by Gorsuch now…We add to that the extreme hypocrisy of seating Handmaid’s Tale under much worse conditions 4 years later…And finally Clarence Thomas, who is only still sitting there because a SCOTUS judge has never been removed from a court that gives them lifetime appointments (a holdover from when the average life expectancy for a white male was 38 years old).
Some combination of Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Thomas should not be on today’s court. They are only sitting there because Democrats are expected to be slavishly devoted to tradition (like not impeaching Thomas nor expanding a court that hasn’t been expanded since the country was 1/10th as large as it is now), but Republicans can play by whatever rules they choose (like having an eight-person court for a full year as they blocked Garland, but then shamelessly ramming through Barrett).