 In the United States, the confirmation hearings to appoint Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court are currently being held. Judge Jackson is being grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee, following which the U.S. Senate will vote on her appointment. If she is confirmed, she will be the first black woman to become a U.S. Supreme Court judge. The questioning in the committee has been on expected lines with both parties using this as a moment to polarize and rally their bases. What does the process say so far about the U.S. politics today? Eugene Parier of breakthrough news explains. I think what we've seen so far in the first few days of the confirmation hearing is that expectedly that it is really being driven by the election year needs of both major parties. Of course the Democrats who had already pledged that the next open seat they would nominate a black woman, Judge Brown Jackson would be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, one of only three blacks to ever serve on the Supreme Court in the entire history of the United States. So in and of itself, both being the first black woman and being one of relatively few black people is seen as an important milestone and an important step forward in the anti-racist struggle. So the Democrats have really been emphasizing heavily the element of the historic element of the nomination, that this would be something that's never happened. You know, Senator Cory Booker talking about his own personal excitement as a black person in this country. So obviously trying to pump up the enthusiasm about the willingness and the ability of the Democrats to protect the rights of the black population from the immense amount of white supremacy that's here. The Republicans on the flip side of the coin are, you know, obviously very wary of what it would look like for them to oppose the first black woman justice. So they are, I would say being less aggressive than you might normally expect, but they're really sinning their questioning and, you know, even to call it questioning, really their grandstanding around a couple main issues, some involving long prison sentences in relationships to some sexual crimes and others in relationship to Judge Brown Jackson's time as a public defender and also in private private practice, where she defended and helped file some lawsuits for Guantanamo Bay inmates. They've centered on these two issues to really try to make it seem as if the nominee by Joe Biden is soft on crime and that by extension, this is just another example of how the Democrats are soft on crime and not really looking out for the best needs of you and your family, which is specifically why I think they've honed in on, you know, what is really a misrepresentation of the judge's record as it concerns the issue of child pornography. So we see it's been a pretty charged hearing. There have also been some religious back and forth that have happened over what the religion of the judge was and whether she was a Christian, how much she attends church. So Republicans definitely seem to sort of be hitting their typical soft but hot button issues, tough on crime, you know, not looking out for the best interests of you and your family, sort of radical left wing violence promoting politics, things they could easily cut into campaign commercials, where the Democrats on the same side are looking to emphasize the fact that like, hey, even though we've done almost nothing in terms of the substantive reality of racism in the country, we are willing to nominate the first black woman justice, which is a big milestone. So you should like us for that. So that's sort of the state of play, if you will, and how the first couple of days so far have played out. If she does get confirmed, Ketanji Brown Jackson will join a Supreme Court, where the conservatives have a decisive majority of six to three. As US Supreme Court judges are appointed for life, such a majority could have a vital impact on the country's future. What does this composition of Supreme Court entail for the United States, and are any changes likely in the future? Yes, absolutely. So of course, the Supreme Court has an odd number of justices that way there can never be a deadlock unless someone is out sick. So yeah, barring something like that, like a justice somehow missing something because of an illness, Justice Clarence Thomas is actually in the hospital right now, which has been an issue of conversation. But barring anything like that, which is relatively unexpected and not that likely to happen. The reality is, is because of the nature of the politics of the country, the majority of the members on the court, not only are appointed by Republicans, but lean, very conservative. So Judge Brown Jackson would really just be replacing somebody in Justice Breyer, who has basically the same judicial philosophy as her. Although, if you ask people on the right, they will say that it's likely that she will be, you know, quote unquote, more left wing. But even if that were to be the case, it would almost certainly not make any difference in terms of the actual outcome of the cases. I mean, even if she was in line with Sonya Sotomayor, who's considered to be the most left wing justice, they would probably be in the minority on a number of different questions. So in terms of the actual things that are being decided by the Supreme Court, I would say that it's very unlikely that things will change. But it means that the court is locked into a general rightward drift, although you do have the Chief Justice John Roberts. And, you know, we've also seen this from from Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh at various times have voted, you know, on the quote unquote, on the other side to, you know, break open a deadlock or break open the typical rightward drift. But by and large, what we have seen is because of the nature of how the Supreme Court is appointed, there is sort of a locked in right wing nature. These people are appointed for life. So in terms of the structural issues, what that has raised with a lot of people is the Constitution of the United States does not actually say how many Supreme Court justices there couldn't be. And in fact, there have been multiple different numbers of justices over the different years. So nine is essentially an arbitrary number. And people have raised many times. I was probably was most famously raised many years ago by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, but it was raised significantly in 2020 that if Democrats went back control of both houses of Congress and of course, have the presidency, that they should just change the rules and they should just add Supreme Court justices so that a Democratic president could appoint people with more liberal quote unquote proclivities who would be more likely to either to protect important rights like a woman's rights to women's right to choose and also to advance certain rights like around the death penalty or other issues like that that are consistently coming before the court that are pushed away from a right wing majority. Also workers rights cases where the majority of justices have a very anti worker position and that this could break things open, but it's been deeply politicized and all of the Republicans and a good chunk of Democrats actually do not want to increase the size of the Supreme Court because they say that it would go against some, you know, some form of Democratic norms in America. And of course, these norms don't really exist, but obviously they don't want to be seen as facilitating the growth of the court in a way that could bring more progressive jurisprudence to the forefront. So the overall issue around the structure of the Supreme Court is really a deeper issue about how no matter what anyone says, the general consensus and American politics is center right at best, very conservative, and the majority in Congress is unwilling to, you know, address really any substantive issue, whether it be the size of the Supreme Court in the filibuster from a procedural perspective that the end result of that will be more progressive legislation or jurisprudence. So that's what it really all comes down to is the structural issues in Congress and the Supreme Court are an attempt by the conservative majority of Congress, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, to prevent structural changes that could help those who are more progressive. The Supreme Court is set to hear some key cases in the near future. The most significant of this has to do with the woman's right to choose. What are these cases and what kind of an impact will they have on society? Well, there are a number of different cases that are on the docket. Of course, the biggest issue and what everyone is talking about vis-a-vis the Supreme Court is a woman's right to choose in which there have been a number of cases that have already come before the Court. There are some that are yet to be heard and they are mainly and there will be many more coming quite frankly because what you can see is opponents of a woman's right to choose in basically every state controlled by conservatives are putting in all number of laws that are explicitly designed to create a legal challenge to Roe v Wade. And so there's the Mississippi case. There's several others that are out there still to be determined. But even if these cases were to go in favor of a woman's right to choose, there will be more cases like this. So certainly those are many, many major cases that is very up in the air. No one really knows exactly what's going to happen. It's a huge step to a Roe v Wade to eliminate it even to even bring it even to gut it to some degree is still a big legal step. It's unclear if the court would be willing to make such a political move which could deeply affect their own ability to act in a way that is considered nonpartisan and that's accepted by the broader population. So that will be one to watch. Certainly Judge Brown Jackson will almost certainly vote exactly the same way that Justice Breyer would and undoubtedly be more emphatically in favor of a woman's right to choose. But it probably will not change the vote issue on that. So that will really be a question of whether or not someone on the conservative majority of the court is unwilling to take a big step to eliminate what is one of the most landmark rights established by the Supreme Court which again is a woman's right to choose. And there are other sort of subsidiary issues beyond that that have come up in these hearings. There's also Griswold v Connecticut which is access to bird control something that could also potentially come before the Supreme Court in the coming term. There are a range of other issues that could pop up. I mean one certainly and one that is a wild card is definitely the death penalty. You know we've seen even on the conservative majority there are more there's more willingness amongst some of the justices it seems to question elements of how the death penalty is provisioned in the United States. But there's likely to be more cases that make it to the Supreme Court based on the methods of execution and the idea that they represent cruel and unusual punishment. And that could be a case where you know a couple wild cards on the so-called conservative side of things could end up you know making some rulings that people might not expect. But on the lower level I think we certainly could potentially expect there would be some rulings around the issues of those with mental disabilities which the Supreme Court has already ruled. You can not execute someone with a mental disability but it's never really been determined what exactly that means and many states use different tests. And that I suspect will come before the court if not this term probably in the next term or two certainly when the new justice is there on the court. So that will be a major issue that will certainly be before the courts without a doubt. And then certainly it'll be interesting to see whether or not any major labor rights issues come up before the court. I think that's that's unclear. But I do think that you know what we're going to see and what we're likely to see is that the Biden administration will try to increase the level of regulations they're putting on companies to try to counteract the fact that their legislative agenda is totally stalled. And on both climate justice and labor rights cases undoubtedly will be strong pushback from corporate America over any particular changes to the law which could come before the Supreme Court and could be quite significant particularly in terms of climate change around the issues of what rules Congress can really make and or rather what rules can be made by agencies in relationship to congressional laws like how much leeway that they have to determine and tighten certain regulations and so on and so forth outside of what's strictly written in the law. Some of that could potentially become before the Supreme Court. So a number of different factors that are are certainly out there but I would say the biggest one is absolutely a woman's right to choose almost certainly the most likely to come before the Supreme Court in a major way in the near term.