 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments on a case that could decide the future of abortion rights in the country. The case has to do with the validity of the Mississippi State Law, which bans most abortions after 15 weeks. This goes against the iconic Roe v. Bade judgment of 1973 which said that women have a constitutional right to access abortions till 24 weeks of the pregnancy. Experts say that the conservative dominated Supreme Court could overturn the Roe v. Bade judgment leading to a massive setback to abortion rights in the country. The situation is the culmination of a long-term Republican plan to strike down the verdict. Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News talks about the structure of the judiciary in the context of the United States. You know, I think the question of Roe v. Bade and in general a woman's right to choose in front of the Supreme Court speaks very heavily to something that I think we've seen across the board in terms of social policies of the United States, which is a heavy shift towards the right wing since the Reagan era. And I think one thing that's important to note about Roe v. Bade and a number of other decisions that were made in the late 1960s, early 1970s, around the death penalty, around criminal justice issues, is that this sparked a major panic, if you will, in the context of the conservative wing of the judiciary of the legal profession and so on and so forth. And really what we've seen since the 1980s and perhaps the number one vehicle for this has been an organization called the Federalist Society, which is a huge organization of right wing lawyers, has been to try to do everything possible to swing the court system back to the right. So for people who don't know fully about the US court system, judges are appointed for life. Once you are there as a judge in the federal system, it is very difficult to remove someone, although they can be impeached. So essentially, if you're able to place enough people of any particular or who are willing to act along a particular ideological persuasion, you can certainly have a big impact on what the types of decisions are going to be. And so what we've seen certainly under President Reagan, we saw this as well under the first President Bush, we saw it as well under the second President Bush, but we saw a major, major acceleration of this under the Trump administration. But it's always a big talking point since the 80s for right wing presidents, who in the president appoints all judges in the federal judiciary, is to appoint judges who are going to rule against abortion, who are going to rule against a woman's right to choose. That is the biggest issue to be appointed as a judge by a Republican president is to be 100% lockstep against a woman's right to choose. And so we have seen over the years a huge expansion in all levels of judiciary, but also of course, on the Supreme Court. And the shift in the Supreme Court has already been talked about in at the time in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, in Justice Comey Barrett's confirmation hearings, in the context of older justices who tend to favor a woman's right to choose when should they retire, should they win a president who will appoint someone else as their, all of this has sort of overridden this. So I think where what we have reached is a moment in the judiciary, which I think is very much on par with the moment we are in the country, which is the right wing backlash against progressive social legislation that started in the 1960s carried over into the early 1970s is really reaching its day new ma. And we are finally seeing the true and full results of this aggressive attempt by a number of conservative organizations very well funded by billionaires and others in order to place people in the courts, especially in the Supreme Court, to set the stage for very right wing anti woman laws to be passed on the state level and to be used as a trigger to try to, if not eliminate Roe v Wade, make it so difficult for women to get abortions that essentially they are abrogating Roe v Wade. So I think it's a very much a part and parcel of the broader right wing shift in this country since the Reagan era. I think it does show how aggressive the right wing has been in manipulating the judiciary. And I think we see how the judiciary in and of itself in the United States, the way it's structured really does lend itself towards a conservatism and lends itself towards being easily manipulated by ideological forces who have the money and the ability to carry out these sorts of strategies. The Roe v Wade verdict is being reexamined even as many polls indicate that there is great support for that particular decision. Abortion is not the only issue on which the US Supreme Court seems to have a very different position from a majority of the people. How do we understand the composition of the Supreme Court with respect to the political systems in the United States? How did the Trump years change the judiciary at various levels? Eugene elaborates. You know, I think in many ways when you look at the constitutional system in the United States, that is where we are, because it really allows minoritarian power to have essentially majority power. You don't even have to have a majority. I mean, you think about the president who so all federal judges are appointed by the president, they're confirmed by the Senate. Although there are ways to sort of get around that, although it's a little bit more complicated, but they're confirmed by the Senate. So allegedly there's some form of checks and balances. But of course, the Senate can be controlled by the same party as the president, or even in the case of some of the things we've seen here, relative quote unquote moderates they call them, I would call them conservative Democrats, also will side oftentimes with Republican presidents in terms of the people they're putting forward, because they want to also be able to speak to a conservative, somewhat pro Republican electorate. So what you end up having here is you have a vast system of vetting. I already mentioned the Federalist Society, there are a range of other organizations, conservative legal organizations that cultivate people starting in law school. And they're very active, in fact, in law schools, and they go out of their way to find ways to place people in different law firms to have make sure they get appointed as prosecutors in different places. I mean, it really is a path in order to reach a very high standard and a very lucrative standard in terms of the legal career. Then they take that broader network of individuals and they pick out of that individuals to become judges. And the way that it's often sort of portrayed is, well, listen, the issue shouldn't be quote unquote ideological litmus test, it should be whether or not you are a quote unquote good jurist, as it were, someone who considers the law and all its aspects. And many Democrats, including Joe Biden, quite frankly, for a long time where he was the head of the Senate Judiciary, and in fact played a very important role in Clarence Thomas getting on the Supreme Court, also go along with that. And it's sort of a kind of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, sort of like I won't block your people if you block my people, as long as you can sort of get up there and give kind of a learned explanation of the law. And even though and say, well, you know, I'm not necessarily saying I'll fall this way or I'll fall that way. But here's my legal principles and so on and so forth. So it's a very kind of complex dance. But when you boil it down, what it ultimately is, is a system of ideological vetting that just sort of tries to present itself like it isn't ideological vetting. And so certainly, this is something that sort of liberal forces or progressive forces, you know, could do, but have not put as much thought into it. But the conservative forces who, you know, really starting in the mid 1960s became very concerned, because there have been a number of rulings around, you know, broader rights for criminal defendants, certainly a woman's right to choose, certainly around civil rights. And they identified the court system as a very particular weakness in the conservative movement that they hadn't focused enough on it. And they needed more ideologically inclined people to get in there. And so you always so that what happens is you have vacancies, people serve for life, they step down for some reasons, they die, whatever it may be. And so you have these periods like in the Trump administration, where there's just a huge amount of vacancies for a couple reasons, one, because many appointments were blocked by Republicans in the Obama era. And two, generationally, many people are dying off or retiring or whatever it may be. And so then, when they just do everything they possibly can to pack the court, essentially. So in the initial stages of the Trump administration, when Republicans also had control, had a significant amount of influence inside of Congress, they use that as leverage to get as many people in the lower level, and also to get in a number of justices in the Supreme Court as well, that would swing the balance towards a more conservative majority. So when you think about it like this, and to draw back to the minority point I made, Trump did not actually get a majority of votes. He got a majority of people who voted, but that's actually a distinct plurality of Americans, including of registered voters. So someone who in fact did not get the majority of votes of voting age people in the country, and a party that inside of Congress, also most of the people are coming from gerrymandered districts, so they don't fully represent the majority of the people in their districts, even if they got a majority of people who won. And when you look at the popularity of almost every major issue for Republicans, the majority of people disagree with that issue. But despite all of that, they're still able to use the sort of conservative nature of the system that when you gain that 50 plus one power and the presidency, and even sometimes when you don't have the majority, but there's enough sort of cultural conservatism that many Democrats or at least enough will vote with you, you end up with a situation like this where the courts are filled with people who whatever they say when they're confirmed are just 100% going to rule down their sort of conservative ideological predilections. And I think that is very dangerous on a range of different issues. And we've seen it, you know, pop up on a range of different issues. It's also a major issue with police killings and what the bar should be for that. It's a major issue in terms of the death penalty in this country, which is historically at the sort of the lowest levels in per popularity that's been since the death penalty was banned in the 1960s. But nevertheless, you see that that's not reflected in the court cases that come about come about because really the judges are chosen by this ideological criteria that a minority is able to impose because of the nature of the US Constitution, which quite frankly lends itself more towards small change and conservatism than it does towards the possibility for major change and progressive ideas.