Despite AWFUL national and international reporting on the Supreme court, their powers are actually quite limited. Their authority is restricted to interpretation of situations where written federal laws do not already exist.

For all it's faults, I would argue the Supreme Court has worked reasonably well - because the justices do not seek elections and do not owe loyalty to their appointees. And anything they do could be relatively easily undone if the US could ever be bother to pass laws again.

In a way, you can almost think of their decisions as open-source. All of their arguments are written down and you can actually read their reasoning for yourself (as opposed to some of the dire interpretations offered by journalists). There are some notable exceptions (Alito and Thomas), but for the most part you can read their arguments for yourself and see that most of them are pretty professional and fair-minded.

> I think it is quite optimistic, if not even downright naive to assume the text matters at all for such protagonists.

If anything, the newest court is doing the opposite of what you are worried about. They are willing to throw out established precedence where there is not written law. In a way, the new court is leaning more democractic to a fault.