It is one of the great political stories of the United States. The entire social agenda and the advancement of citizens’ rights are in the hands of an institution, the Supreme Court, politically far removed from what American society is today. And it is there, in the highest judicial instance of the country, as has been seen these days with the right to abortion, where the rights of citizens really advance and regress.
In the last three decades, Republicans have only won the popular vote in one presidential election (the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004). But the Supreme today has an unusual conservative majority, of six conservative magistrates against three. A bias that had not been seen in almost a hundred years.
How many judges make up the Supreme Court? How are they chosen? Why do they have so much power? In the video that accompanies this news item, Pablo Guimón, former Washington correspondent for El País, answers all these questions by taking a historical look at the changes that this institution has undergone. The video is a journey through time through the family photo of the nine judges that make it up and how that image has been transformed until it has a majority of 6 to 3 conservative judges. The Supreme is today younger, more feminine and less white. It more demographically resembles the America of the present. But politically it is something else. The solid conservative majority responds to the white, Christian, rural America of the past.
