Law is a complicated thing, but understanding the role of the Supreme Court in our government is not. Unlike Congress and the presidency, the Supreme Court is not a political branch of government. What that means is that it is not concerned with policy: The justices’ job is not to rule on the basis of whether a law is a good idea or not.

Instead, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 81, the Supreme Court uses the Constitution as “the standard of construction for the laws.”

Essentially, the Supreme Court’s role is one of a referee. In their decisions on the cases they hear, the justices make sure the federal government stays within its bounds and does not infringe on the rights of the people.

Nevertheless, President Barack Obama highlighted our cultural misunderstanding of the Supreme Court when he said the problem of judicial activism or lack of restraint was a problem of “an unelected group of people … overturn[ing] a duly constituted and passed law.”

Obama is not a stranger to criticizing the Supreme Court as a sitting president, even though the justices are coequal partners in American government. Like Congress and the president, the Supreme Court is fully one-third of it.

The first time he openly came out against the Supreme Court was in 2010 during his State of the Union address, after the Citizens United decision, in his words, “open[ed] the floodgates for special interests” to have a role in determining the result of elections.

Courts do not make law. It has long been our understanding of the judiciary that, in its opinions, it discovers or unearths law. It is for us to square seemingly but not explicitly activist with previously established legal doctrines.

In this case, Obama seems to be warning against a ruling by the Supreme Court that overturns a law passed by congressional majorities, signed by a president elected by a wide margin and supported by millions of Americans. He does so, moreover, as if the justices should care.

Obama’s observation that the Supreme Court is made up of unelected justices is exactly the point. Incidentally, is also the point of innumerable conservatives or Republicans who have spoken out against judicial activism.

Democracy has nothing to do with the Supreme Court. Majority rule in Congress and popular support have nothing to do with it, either. It is the Supreme Court’s constitutional duty to rule against the preferences of the president — including a president who was elected with as much star power as Barack Obama — or Congress or the American people when those preferences conflict with what is constitutionally right.