Yes. The Constitution only provides for the Supreme Court and not for any of the lower Federal government courts. Marbury versus Madison, the case that asserted that the judicial branch decides whether confressionally-passed legislation is constitutional, was decided decades after the adoption of the Constitution. The Senate was elected by the state legislatures, thereby giving the states a role to play in the national government, until nearly 120 years later. And Congress didn’t start to delegate its legislative power to executive-branch administrative agencies in any meaningful way until the 1930s.
Yet the filibuster had been in place since the 18th century and lasted until this month in 2013.
Congressionally, not confressionally.
Marbury v. Madison was in effect an extra-constitutional coup. Nowhere in the US constitution is the SC, or any federal court, given the power to invalidate legislation (i.e.”judicial review”). Yet the framers, many of whom were still alive when this case was decided, meekly rolled over for it. As for the filibuster, it was first used in 1837. And as for the 17th Amendment allowing for the popular election of senators, much criticism of it is in vogue in conservative circles, yet it must have has some merit, or 3/4 of the 48 states would not have voted to ratify it!
The Democrat party has just about shot its wad, with the presumptuousness of Obamacare, and this is a desperation move, unlikely to change a lot. A slim GOP majority should it be gained in 2014 should use it to clean house.