The federal government, whether SCOTUS, Congress, and/or the President, are certainly NOT the ultimate arbitrators of all constitutional questions. The states are. (Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Art VI, Cl 2 U.S. Constitution).
If you get that, you’re one of a precious few that does.
This is the basis for IMMEDIATE state resolution and nullification of unconstitutional federal acts and decisions.
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/dunkin/150302
But so far, not enough people get this. Part of the problem is people have somehow let go of the Constitution, the ONLY legal bastion of freedom against federal tyranny, as the Supreme Law of the Land.
Actually, the people are the final arbiters.
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” —Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207
“The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.” —Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526
“The information of the people at large can alone make them safe as they are the sole depository of our political and religious freedom.” —Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417