Final answer:
Enforcing the 15th Amendment through the courts was not ideal due to restrictive Supreme Court rulings, race-neutral voting qualifications imposed by states, and the absence of effective anti-discrimination legislation until 1965.
Step-by-step explanation:
Using the courts to enforce the 15th Amendment was not an ideal approach because of several significant judicial setbacks and the inherent limitations of the amendment itself. Firstly, the judicial system, reflected by the Supreme Court decisions in cases like U.S. v. Reese and U.S. v. Cruikshank, restricted the breadth of the Amendment.
The Reese case ruled that the 15th Amendment did not apply to local and state elections, while Cruikshank limited the federal government's ability to intervene in private acts of discrimination, concluding that the 14th and 15th Amendments extended only to state actions, not individual ones.
Additionally, states found ways to circumvent the Amendment through seemingly race-neutral qualifications such as literacy tests, land ownership, and poll taxes, effectively disenfranchising many African American voters.
The inability to secure effective federal legislation against such measures until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, due to active opposition, including from Southern Democrats, further impeded the defense and enforcement of the 15th Amendment's provisions.