 Recently, the US Supreme Court overturned the historic Roe vs. Wade verdict, removing federal protection for abortion rights in the country. The decision has led to widespread protests and the Supreme Court has been universally condemned for setting the clock backwards and delivering a ruling that strikes at the heart of women's freedom and their right to bodily autonomy. The decision has once again stirred debates on the anti-democratic nature of the Supreme Court and political institutions in the US. Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News addresses these issues. You know, I think what the Supreme Court did in the Roe decision shows, well it shows two things. I mean, I think it shows that the role of the Supreme Court is in and of itself to be an anti-democratic break. And on top of that, that ultimately the existence of the Supreme Court and sort of the broader sort of political sphere is to try to find ways to resolve different major conflicts in society outside of any real process where individuals themselves are able to have some form of input into it. And so it serves sort of a dual function. I think the Supreme Court can on the one hand act in a way to become a serious break on progressive change. We saw that during the New Deal. We saw that during the so-called progressive era in the United States that really some of the most right-wing decisions actually came at high tide moments for radical workers' movements and explicitly designed to sort of break the momentum of that reality. And I think similarly what we're seeing here now is a similar piece, how the changes in the country over the past 30 or so years has made the average sort of citizen, average voter has become more progressive. More progressive policies tend to have more majority support than let's say 40 or 50 years ago. And the Republican party is in an extreme minoritarian position in terms of the popularity of many of the core pillar policies of their political movement, including of course the woman's right to choose. And the Supreme Court is being used by them again and similar to the same way that it was in fact in the 1930s against FDR where they come up with these test cases to find a way to get to the Supreme Court to use this unelected nine-person judge for life highly insulated institution as a break on progressive policy. And I think the role that the Supreme Court is there to have and to play is to be this sort of arbiter that is not above the sort of politics of society, but to some degree abstracted out of it because these people are there for life, they are, they can be impeached theoretically. But by and large, almost nobody is ever going to be removed from the Supreme Court. They are obviously not elected in the first place, so there's no sort of popular referendum on them. And of course their highly ambiguous sort of role in terms of their powers is extreme, even though it's not quite spelled out very well. So it puts them in a position to make big decisions. And it also puts them in a position to be as insulated as possible from the actual backlash to those decisions, which allows it them to make these sort of anti-majoritarian sentiments on a regular basis. So I think what we're really seeing is sort of the dual role is the role of the court in the constitutional process itself, which is to be a highly unaccountable, highly undemocratic body that exists to essentially arbitrate the disputes of the democracy, which in and of itself is a bit of a contradiction, but also that it has a unique role in that context as a break against progressive policy. And I think to some degree that's exactly why there is a cascading reality of anti-democratic institutions in the United States, the Senate in and of itself, which is also an anti-democratic, minoritarian institution. The very fact that it's the Senate that confirms them, the president, that appoint that chooses them and that then they're just put in there for life, I think speaks to the fact that they set up this sort of multi-layered process, the founders that is, in order to make sure it would be very difficult to make significant change in the political system in the United States. And I think this is a perfect example of that. In the aftermath of the verdict, the Democratic Party has continued with business as usual, raising money and urging people to vote for it. This is despite the fact that the Democrats have failed to institutionalize abortion rights over the decades despite claiming to support it. There have also been a number of questions raised on how to protect same-sex marriage, contraception, etc., from the Supreme Court. What are the questions and proposals that are emerging to address these issues? How are people responding to the strategies of the Democratic Party? You know, one of the things that's been interesting in the wake of the decision is how many people have been very angry and upset with the Democratic Party response and how inadequate it's been. Even many people who I think we consider themselves moderate, centrist, people who maybe supported a lot of the Democratic leadership in the way they wanted to approach these issues in the past, that see voting is not the only answer as it were. I think many people want to vote, but they recognize more has to be done. I think the main axis of resistance we're seeing right now is an attempt to pressure President Biden to use his executive power, right? You've got the courts. You've got Congress. You've got the president. Each one has their own power and their own sphere of influence in which they can act with relative impunity. And President Biden has a long list of things that he could in fact do. And people are really making a big point around this issue of, well, why would we put you in the presidency if you weren't actually going to do something? And Democrats keep saying, we'll put us in there. Well, you have the majority in the Senate, the majority in the House and the presidency. And it seems like you can't act at all in Congress. So why would you not act in the White House when there's no one else to stop you other than President Biden himself? But I think there's a deeper question that has started to come to the forefront here. And it's a question that occasionally pops into the surface in these major constitutional issues in the United States. And that is the issue of the Constitution itself. I mean, many people are asking, why is it that an institution in a body like the Senate can operate in a non-majority rule fashion where you have this filibuster, where despite the fact you have a majority of Democrats and a majority of people oftentimes supporting certain measures, you cannot pass them? Why is it that we have this unelected Supreme Court period? And also, why is it that it's just nine judges when that's not written down in the Constitution? Maybe it should change. And on top of that, what about the entire institution of the courts and judicial review and how these different decisions are made? Is that, in fact, correct? Is that how it could be? So it's an unformed conversation in many ways. But I think the thing that we've really seen is that the difficulty in resisting situations like this because of the institutional anti-democratic reality, I mean, you have the Congress, but there's all the problems with that. You could vote in three or four more Democratic senators this year and they still might not change the filibuster. There's really probably not that much you could do to impeach the Supreme Court justices. They're there for life. And I think when people start to look at these sort of fundamental structural anti-democratic realities, it really is making people start to question whether or not the structure itself has to be addressed. And I think the real question is, is where does that conversation go? Because obviously, many people have been questioning that for some time. But now that there's a broader swath of people who maybe thought, ah, some of that kind of questioning was a little too radical, who are now saying we have to really look at this anew. I think there's a real question of one of the downstream effects of this decision could be a greater pressure on the United States to make deeper constitutional reforms that really can port more to where the society is actually at in 2022.