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Ratings Firm Warns Ukraine War Will Lift Inflation to 7 Percent; Ukraine Calls Nestle Out for Doing Business with Russia; Soon, Senate Hearing Resumes for Supreme Court Nominee Jackson; Senate Hearing for Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired March 22, 2022 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[13:30:02]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: You can expect Russia's war on Ukraine to have a big impact this year on the price we pay for everyday household items, gas, groceries, here in the U.S.

Fitch Ratings firm is upping its forecast, citing this war, saying U.S. consumer prices are now expected to rise by an average of 7 percent this year compared to 4.9 percent last year.

CNN reporter, Matt Egan, is here to break it down for us.

Matt, the firm says this war is sparking a potentially huge global supply shock.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Ana, the problem here is that the world relies on Russia and Ukraine for a bunch of the stuff that makes the economy go -- food, energy, metals, a whole bunch of other raw materials.

And that supply is now in doubt, in part, because of the powerful sanctions imposed on Russia.

So before the invasion, Fitch ratings expected inflation would cool off this year. Now they think it will heat up, calling for 7 percent on average inflation for this year.

Remember, the Fed's goal is for 2 percent inflation in a healthy environment. We're nowhere near there.

And there's this growing sense that the Fed will have to do more to cool off inflation by raising interesting rates aggressively. That will increase borrowing costs on mortgages and car loans, credit cards.

Goldman Sachs is now predicting the Fed has to raise interest rates by a half a percentage point in each of the next two meetings. We haven't seen anything like that in back-to-back meetings since 1994.

I think that really speaks to the scale of the inflation problem here. CABRERA: Meantime, we've seen so many businesses try to make a dent on

what's happening in Ukraine by punishing Russia, pulling their business.

Nestle, not exactly in. And President Zelenskyy is calling Nestle out.

EGAN: He's ramping up the pressure on Nestle, which still employs more than 7,000 people in Russia.

Nestle, the maker of Gerber baby food and KitKat candy bars, are defending themselves by point out they've made some changes. They've stopped all imports and exports from Russia, except essential products like baby food.

They put out this statement saying that they no longer make investments or advertise their products. "We do not make a profit from our remaining activities."

Now while Nestle has scaled back somewhat, some companies really haven't done much at all.

A Yale professor has this list of companies that have defied the pressure here. That includes Credit Suisse, Ralph Lauren, Koch Industries, which is the conglomerate run by billionaire, Charles Koch.

There's an effort though in Congress to try to get these companies to do more in terms of distancing themselves from Russia.

House Oversight Chair Carol Maloney introduced a bill that would ban the United States from buying goods or services from companies currently operating in Russia.

All of this designed to put more pressure on Russia's economy.

CABRERA: Matt Egan, good to see you. Thank you.

EGAN: Thank you.

We'll be right back.

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[13:37:43]

CABRERA: Any minute now, the Senate Judiciary Committee will return from their lunch break to continue questioning Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

So far, she's been grilled on everything, from abortion to her past sentences for child porn offenders, as well as her judicial philosophy, even her faith.

And things got contentious when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham got to questioning her. We're going to show you one very heated moment.

But first, I want to bring in our experts and our reporters.

I want to start with CNN's senior legal analyst, Laura Coates.

Because listen to Republican Lindsey Graham as he used a chunk of his time laying out what he calls a double standard for judicial nominees.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The reason I'm bringing all this up is it gives me a chance to remind this committee and America there are two standards going on here.

If you are an African-American conservative woman, you're fair game to have your life turned upside down, to be filibustered, no matter how qualified you are.

And if you express your faith as a conservative, all of a sudden, you're an F'ing nut.

And we're tired of it. It's not going to happen to you.

But it just appalls me that we can have such a system in America that, if a conservative woman wants to stand out and say, I love my family just as much as you love yours, and my faith means just as much to me as it does you, that, all of a sudden, they are some kind of weirdo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: And just want to call our viewers' attention to the right side there. That's live. You can see she's about to resume -- take her seat and resume questioning and answering those questions. And we will do that in just a moment.

In fact, I'm told they are gaveling in. Let's just listen.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL) -- statement in terms of some research that was undertaken during the break.

Judge Jackson, earlier, Senator Cornyn said that you had called former President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a, quote, "war criminal," unquote.

I noticed a little surprise in your reaction. And I was surprised by the allegation.

During your service as a public defender, you filed several habeas petitions against the United States, naming former President Bush and former Secretary Rumsfeld in their official capacities.

[13:40:03]

You were advocating on behalf of individuals who argued they were civilians, wrongly classified as enemy combatants of the United States. And your filing was part of your professional responsibility to zealously advocate for your clients.

In those petitions, the individuals raised more than a dozen claims for relief.

One of which was an allegation that the government had sanctioned torture against the individuals, which constituted war crimes under the alien tort statute.

The Alien Tort statute allows courts to hear cases for alleged violations of the law of nations or the treaties of the United States. Apparently, this is what Senator Cornyn was referencing.

So to be clear, there was no time where you called President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld a, quote, "war criminal," close quote.

Did you want to --

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, U.S. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Correct, Senator.

No, thank you. That was correct.

DURBIN: Thank you very much.

We now recognize Senator Lee.

SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Judge Jackson, for being here.

I want to talk today about some things you heard about yesterday. There was a lot of talk from members of this committee about judicial philosophy. I want to talk a little bit about what that means and why it's important.

We'll start with what it means, at least to me.

One of the things that you heard from a lot of members of the committee, whether they couched it in terms of judicial philosophy or not, relates to the idea that justice should be blind. That justice properly administered within our system is blind.

And that, therefore, individual justices and judges serving in Article III courts should be blind in the sense that they are able to see and understand and interpret the law.

Understand what the law is, while understanding that the idea of what the law should be is left to other branches of government, not to the judiciary.

In this respect, we recognize that blind justice and blind justices, those who are blind to the things they are supposed to be blind to, are those willing to recognize that if there's a policy flaw in the law, and if there's a policy change that needs to be made, it's not the role of the court to change it.

That belongs to two different branches of government, primarily to Congress.

This, of course, requires judicial restraint. It requires judicial humility.

And it gets back to what I was describing yesterday when I referred to Justice Barrett drawing on the analogy from "The Odyssey" of Odysseus binding himself to the mast of the ship.

Most of us refer to this judicial philosophy as Textualism. Textualism is neither liberal nor conservative. It's neither Republican nor Democratic.

It's just the approach that says what the law says matters and the job of the jurist is to look at the text and figure out what the text means, to ascertain the original public meaning of the text in question.

While I doubt there are any members of this committee who would disagree with the idea that justice should be blind in this respect, and that policy changes need to be made by the political branches of government, primarily by the legislative branch and not by the courts, we did hear some statements that I think are at least a little bit at odds with that concept of justice.

One of my colleagues mentioned that you should interpret the Constitution in a way that works for the people of today. Fair enough. Certainly don't want to interpret the Constitution in a way that doesn't work.

Again, that's not the objective. The object is not to ascertain good policy. The objective is to ascertain what the law requires.

You were urged to consider the effects of the court's actions on people's lives. There again, as so far as this relates to policy, it's not really the job of the courts.

You were admonished that you must, quote, "be able to see the real people at the other end of the court's rulings, like Americans, who are one Supreme Court decision away from losing their health insurance or one court decision away from the ability to make their own health care choices." And the list goes on and on.

Now that type of judicial philosophy would have you step into the role of policymaker and decide what the law should be rather than what the law is.

You also heard quoted a couple of times yesterday, quoted or paraphrased or otherwise referenced, Federalist 78 in which Alexander Hamilton refers to the difference between law, between will and judgment.

[13:44:59]

Will, as expressed by Hamilton, refers to what the law should be. Judgment pertains to what the law is. The judicial branch has the latter power, but not the former. The legislative branch has the former, but not the latter.

Judge Jackson, I'd love it get your thoughts on this discussion about what it means -- what blind justice is, why that's important.

Let's start with this formulation of it, though. Does the law determine the outcome of a case, or does the outcome of the case determine the law?

JACKSON: Thank you, Senator.

The law determines the outcome of the case.

LEE: And so any time you are looking at a case and you are looking at the outcomes for ordinary Americans, for day-to-day Americans, if you are looking beyond the scope of deciding that case, and if you are looking even within that case, beyond what the law says, you would be stepping into a province of a different branch.

Is that right?

JACKSON: I believe so. The law and the facts of the case determine the outcome of cases.

LEE: I think that's an accurate statement.

It's important to emphasize this. This is also something that Hamilton describes in Federalist 78, where he goes on to say, any time you start to see the courts start to exercise will instead of judgment, the result is supplanting the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives through the courts.

And that tends to undermine the whole system.

You see, there's a reason, of course, why we give life tenure to Article III judges and justices. And that is because we want to make sure that they have the power, the authority, the discretion and the confidence to issue a decision that they might not be comfortable with.

In fact, a judge who always agrees with and is always comfortable with his or her own opinions is, as Justice Scalia used to say, is not a very good judge.

So we wanted them, you, all, to have confidence in being able to make the right decision, even knowing that you and the public at large might be uncomfortable with the result it produces.

Congress makes laws that you won't always agree with. Congress is accountable to the people at regular intervals.

You can fire every member of the House of Representatives every two years. You can fire one-third of us in the Senate every two years.

We insulate judges and Supreme Court justices from that same accountability precisely for this reason. It's because political accountability is so important. This is borne out in the judicial oath, one of the oaths that you'll

take, if confirmed to this position as an associate justice, in which you'll swear or affirm that you will administer justice without respect to persons and that you'll do it faithfully and impartially.

I read this to mean that you do it without consideration of external circumstances, external considerations, policy considerations or otherwise.

Now this relates to some interaction that you and I had when you came before this committee for your confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit where you now sit.

In connection with that hearing, I submitted some questions to the record in which I asked you whether, to what extent the Constitution protects rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution itself. And if so, to specify what those rights were.

You responded by citing a number of cases, involving Griswald vs. Connecticut, Roe vs. Wade, Loving vs. Virginia, and a handful of others.

You also suggested that the Ninth Amendment was something -- was a source for such rights, enumerated rights.

The Ninth Amendment, of course, states, quote, that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Judge Jackson, what specific rights has the Supreme Court identified as flowing from the Ninth Amendment?

By that, I mean specifically from the Ninth Amendment, rather than in sort of an also ran list of other features of the Constitution that might back up a particular ruling.

What rights has the Constitution identified as flowing specifically from the Ninth Amendment?

JACKSON: Thank you, Senator.

The Supreme Court, as I understand it, has not identified any particular rights flowing directly from the Ninth Amendment. Although, as you said, the text of the amendment suggests that there are some rights that are not enumerated.

[13:49:59]

LEE: Right. Right. It's very existence and it's very language suggests that. Which opens up other questions as to how those are to be resolved. It's led to considerable debate among scholars and jurists alike as to whether, to what extent, to what way this is enforceable, those rights are enforceable by the courts.

But how would we go about deciding that? How would -- how would jurists go about deciding this question appropriately? In other words, would it be more -- would it be more appropriate to

say, we will ascertain the existence of rights protected by the Ninth Amendment based on contemporaneous understanding at the time of the ratification of the Ninth Amendment?

Or would it be more open-ended to protect rights that we think are important today?

JACKSON: Thank you, Senator.

The Supreme Court now very clearly has determined that in order to interpret provisions of the Constitution, we look to the time of the founding.

And we ascertain, based on what the original public meaning of the words of the Constitution were at the time.

Sometimes that yields a particular answer. Other times, you might have to look to practices, historically, from that time.

But that -- that is -- that would be the way in which you would go about interpreting the Ninth Amendment.

LEE: Could it also be that it leaves this to be decided at the discretion of the Supreme Court itself?

In other words, not based on any historical precedent but based on what the Supreme Court justices themselves deem appropriate at the moment?

JACKSON: I don't think so.

LEE: And why is that?

JACKSON: Because the way in which the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution is with reference to the meaning of the text at the time.

That it is one of the constraints, as I mentioned, in terms of my own way of handling, interpreting the law.

One of the constraints is that you're bound by the text and what it meant to those who drafted it.

LEE: OK. At the time. Got you. Yes.

Now, on February 1st of this year, President Biden said that he was looking for a Supreme Court nominee. This was, as I recall, right after Justice Breyer announced that he would be stepping down and before he had announced whom he might nominate.

That he was looking for a nominee, quote, with, quote, "a judicial philosophy that's more one that suggests that there are un-enumerated rights to the Constitution and all new members mean something, including the Ninth Amendment."

So, do you share the judicial philosophy that President Biden described in that statement?

JACKSON: Senator, I haven't reviewed that statement. But I have not discussed anything about enumerated rights, unenumerated rights with the president.

LEE: With the president?

JACKSON: Yes.

LEE: Did -- so, did President Biden --

CABRERA: We will continue to monitor this hearing. Of course, that is Supreme Court justice nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, taking questions right now from Senator Mike Lee.

Quick break. We'll be right back.

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[13:53:04]

CABRERA: I want to take you right back to the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson.

JACKSON: -- under Title VII, it is generally impermissible.

LEE: And impermissible only in very narrow circumstances?

JACKSON: I believe so. And the statute itself has some restrictions in terms of to whom it applies.

LEE: Right.

JACKSON: The employers.

LEE: Some are exclusions in terms of religious employers, for example.

Not being able to discriminate on the basis of race but it exempts religious employers within certain spheres in order to be able to protect that religious employer's discretion to operate within its faith and the rules of its faith.

And by doing that, it makes that much clearer, by making that distinction, it makes that much clearer that discrimination on the basis of race in employment is not something that the law smiles upon, nor should it.

Let's -- let's talk about the Commerce Clause for a minute, if that's all right.

At the time of the founding, the founding fathers didn't foresee and almost certainly could not have foreseen the invention of radios, televisions, airplanes, the Internet, telephone networks.

And yet, all of those things are governed by federal law. By federal law and not by state law. Why is this Constitutional? [13:59:46]

JACKSON: Well, Senator, the Commerce Clause was initially interpreted by the Supreme Court to be very broad to allow for federal regulation of interstate commerce and the growth of the economy in this country.

But over time, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Commerce Clause limits the federal government --