Instead, the most meaningful gun-safety reform of the last several years took place in a chamber 279 feet away, in a body not constitutionally designated with legislative affairs, but increasingly and nonetheless tasked with addressing them: the United States Supreme Court. On Monday, the Court refused to hear a claim that Americans have a constitutionally-protected right to own a semi-automatic weapon. In so doing, the judicial branch effectively held up state bans on assault weapons in New York and Connecticut. It was not a national solution, but the action nonetheless represented a significant advance, something the U.S. Congress has proven itself incapable of achieving.

In the next several days, the Court will again school the other branches of government, when it rules on U.S. vs Texas, where it will either bless or strike down president Obama’s executive actions on immigration—executive branch decisions driven in large part by legislative branch inaction.

Once again, the Court is being asked to referee a dispute that should really be handled by one (or both) of the other branches of government, like a neighbor called in to settle a fight between two warring spouses. But this is the new model of American governance: Politics has become so poisonous and treacherous that it has incapacitated two of the three branches of government. And the only one left to pick up the slack —which is to say, advance major changes relating to healthcare, equal rights, climate change and immigration—is an unelected body of five men and three women (at present) serving lifetime tenures at their leisure.

According to Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, “This problem has been in the works for a long time. Even before we had this level of dysfunction, Congress was passing the buck and pointing fingers. They’d pass vague pieces of legislation and leave the details to courts.”

But today, Ornstein argues, the problem of dysfunction has magnified: a Frankenstein built in the lab, running amok in the streets.

If the rise of a furious and unmanageable political force was not already cause for Americans to be concerned about the state of affairs, this week is showing the country that something is very, very wrong with its democracy: The courts are governing. That’s not what they were supposed to do.

So is it any surprise that the opinions issuing forth from the bench are so emotional? These justices effectively and desperately want to explain their worldview, occupying majority/minority leadership roles that happen to be right in the crosshairs of heated political debate. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was known for his florid dissents, especially in the wake of decisions supporting gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act; on Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a charged dissent on racial injustice that quoted Michele Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates.