Really?
Many of the Founding Fathers were lawyers. They understood how the law works. They understood what the exercise of judicial power (as they delegated to the federal courts in Article III of the Constitution) means. They had no reason to believe that the application of law (including the Constitution) to the deciding of cases and controversies would necessarily be simple.
It is questionable whether they actually thought they were delegating to the federal courts the power that is now exercised by them.
Rather they believed that all three branches of the government would exercise constitutional restraint. The Congress by not passing unconstitutional bills, the President by refusing to enforce unconstitutional laws, and the Courts by refusing to act on them.
Remember a couple of things that they also didn't anticipate:
The party system
The electoral college actually electing the president (some of the FF's believed that a pack of favorite sons would garner electoral votes, and that fairly frequently the House of Reps would end up actually choosing the POTUS.)
The almost complete uselessness of the powers of impeachment. (It was thought that impeachment and removal from office would be fairly common for any kind of misdeed by federal officials. As it happens that has not turned out to be the case.)
No, the hypocracy noted by the original poster is due to the fairly obvious truth that we live under a government of men and not laws.
Very few Congressmen, Senators, Presidents, or Federal Judges have any respect, or even understanding of the rule of law.
Disagree? Take a look at Alcohol prohibition. In 1919 it was (correctly) noted that the Federal Government banning booze would require a constitutional amendment to grant it that authority. Even Joe Sixpack realized this. Today the Federal government claims the right to implement Obamacare, Congress claims the right to delegate declaration of war to the executive. FISA courts, unauthorized spying on all Americans, Torture. Need I go on? Probably 90% of what the Feds do is outside of their charter. I like to call this 'aconstitutional' government. That is to say the constitution provides no effective barrier to the government doing exactly what it wishes.
Lastly, it is worth noting that the constitution is a comparatively short document written in plain English. Lawyers or not, (and there are some notable exceptions) they wrote a document designed to be clear and understandable.
