I can't really add much to what you wrote, and I fully agree with most of it. I think the Court went very wrong in the 60's under former Chief Justice Earl Warren, a liberal icon for his willingness to invent rights supposedly granted by the Constitution but not stated in the document. Somehow the idea became respectable that judges, particularly Supreme Court Justices, were not there just to decide cases and measure laws against the dictates of the Constitution, but were also authorized to apply their sage wisdom to decide the troubling issues that plagued society but that the congress had not managed to deal with. Step one was to apply the Bill of Rights to the states through something called the incorporation doctrine. You'll notice that the first ten amendments apply by their terms only to congress and the federal government. If a state wanted to say, establish a state religion, they could and several states did just that.
The incorporation doctrine basically stated that the 14th Amendment, because it prohibited the states from denying "due process" to their citizens, actually meant that most of the rights set out in the Bill of Rights also applied to the states. Hence, the Court could rule on matters of state criminal procedure and legislate from the bench and order that obviously guilty defendants be set free because police violated some legal technicality. Step two became the Court taking over the role and state legislators and telling the state how to run their business.
Of course that wasn't enough. There were progressive causes that ignorant legislatures refused to adopt. In Step Three the Court began to invent rights and call them constitutional imperatives. For example, the Court ruled that a state could not impose residency requirements on getting welfare. So if a state wanted to grant generous provisions to its own citizens, but not see them act as a magnet for poor people from other states, it was out of luck. That was ruled an unconstitutional burden on the right to travel. I kid you not.
A lot of people will say the Constitution was old and judges needed to invent ways to make it apply to modern issues. The problem with that is that if it can mean anything five Justices say it means, it loses all meaning. Plus, whenever judges decide issues that properly belong in legislatures, our democracy is eroded. Federal judges have lifetime appointments and don't answer to voters. Legislators and congressmen do.
