You have discovered legal formalism. As you may guess, the fact that it has a name like “formalism” and not simply “the law” indicates that there are other schools of thought. To quote Wikipedia:
The antithesis of formalism is legal realism, which has been said to be “[p]erhaps the most pervasive and accepted theory of how judges arrive at legal decisions.”
Myself? I’m a legal realist, and I think formalism is what activist conservative judges insist they’re adhering to when in fact they’re just engaged in a more reactionary (pro-conservative) kind of legal realism.
Have you considered that the reverse might also be true? That every time a court throws its hands up and says “Gosh, my hands are tied, there’s just nothing I can do about this outright horrific piece of legislation unless the legislature acts to change it!” the judges who make those kinds of rulings snigger at you behind your back and high five one another about how, once again, they have pulled the wool over your eyes and ducked blame?
Because, you know, a lot of those same judges, interesting enough, are liable to “find” ways to invoke higher precedent (eg: their own personal favorite interpretation of the constitution) when they come across a law they don’t like. But still they say “Oh, I’m not a inventing the law or overriding the will of the people or the legislature: I’m just following the higher law of the Constitution. Calling ‘balls and strikes’ you know?”