Ukrainian cook Diana Khalilova is in her happy place, working her wizardry in the kitchen to delight the taste buds of hungry friends.

But she’s not at the food and wine bistro where she normally works – it closed when Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Instead, the young cook is in a cramped kitchen, after curfew, throwing together a bulgur risotto for her 20-something housemates brought together by war.

The tools of flavor are the same: pouches of pre-prepped delicacies brought home from the restaurant to eat so they don’t spoil, such as anchovy and shredded onion paste, wild mushrooms, and salty goat pecorino cheese.

As snow falls outside, the thick-walled 150-year-old apartment – with its high ceilings and artistic touches (an illustrator and musicians live here too) – fills with the mouthwatering aroma of frying onions and garlic.

Yet it is not long before the war intrudes upon the conversation, bringing with it a boiling anger at Russian attackers.

“Today we learned how to shoot; it was so much fun,” says Ms. Khalilova, about a session for volunteers to learn assault rifle basics. It was the first time she had ever touched a gun.

“I’m a complete pacifist – I never thought about arms and weapons,” she says while scoring several locally produced brie cheeses for baking.

“But today I am so ... angry,” Ms. Khalilova says, using an expletive. “I am so shocked at all the damage and cruelty. I just want to – I don’t know – I just want to kill these Russian [invaders] by my own hands.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian chefs at the gourmet Jela Restaurant prepare salad portions for volunteer organizations, as Ukrainians ready for an expected Russian military assault on the strategic Black Sea port city of Odessa, Ukraine, on March 15, 2022. The restaurant closed after the Russian invasion, but the kitchen produces meals for civil defense and other volunteers.

A greater cause

The cook may not join actual combat. But she is one of legions of young Ukrainians whose trajectories have been upended by Russia’s invasion and who are now temporarily reorienting their daily lives.

Largely unprepared for the impact of Russia’s three-pronged assault, which has enveloped Ukraine and triggered an outpouring of global support, many young Ukrainians are finding unexpected purpose for their seething anger in renewed national pride, and by taking personal action on behalf of a greater cause.

“Now I am just trying to be useful,” says Ms. Khalilova, who these days often serves at a volunteer kitchen, cooking food for security forces and for Ukrainians displaced by the war.

“I love to make delicious food,” she says. The place where she volunteers was a center for feeding homeless children, she adds. “They just took on more responsibility.”

Dreams of being a chef are on hold, thanks to the war. She brushes garlic skins off the cutting board, then picks up a gourmet pouch. “Fermented lemons!” she exclaims. It is not the sort of delicacy that she expects to be using much in her new role. 

Overflowing volunteerism

A few blocks away in this historic Black Sea port city – expected to be the final target of Russia’s southern advance, with Russian warships lurking off the coast – another young professional Ukrainian is putting the parameters of her life on a wartime footing.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian lawyer Kseniia Havrina poses for a portrait beside a wall painting in the strategic Black Sea port city of Odessa, Ukraine, on March 13. Ms. Havrina is one of a number of young Ukrainian professionals who have repurposed their lives since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, joining civil defense efforts.

Chief legal counsel for an information technology firm, Kseniia Havrina lost her job last week when her company downsized. Now her dream of setting up on her own has been inadvertently fast-tracked.

When the invasion began, the first bomb she heard prompted a frantic Google search for the contents of the emergency suitcase used in the sitcom series “The Big Bang Theory” by the show’s nerdy intellectual character Sheldon Cooper.

Ms. Havrina packed the essentials, from key documents to phone chargers, and raced across the border to safety in Moldova. Almost immediately she had second thoughts, because her mother and sister were stuck in bomb shelters in “a very hard part” of the capital, Kyiv.

Telling her mother that she was – and still is – safe in Moldova, Ms. Havrina drove back to Odessa on the fourth day of the war with jugs of gas and motor oil to make Molotov cocktails. She teamed up with a friend she had recently met on the Tinder dating app, and began to live with a small group in central Odessa, which today inspires her with its devoted volunteerism.

Now the lawyer ferries vulnerable Ukrainians to the border in her car, and helps her housemates to fill sandbags and prepare Odessa’s civil defense.

The number of volunteers wanting to join the Territorial Defense force is so high, she says, that even a young man working with the police, who lives with her group, has found it impossible to bribe his way into a unit.

Ms. Havrina has been awed at how the war is changing Ukrainian society, and the priorities of young people like herself.

“I have never seen people so unified as now. It’s everywhere, in shops, on the streets; people are talking to each other, and it’s so inspiring,” she says. “It’s not Ukraine, it’s a New Ukraine.”

Her new project aims to help Ukraine’s IT army wage the information war against Russia.

Her first step was to petition the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking that IT specialists be exempt from rules forbidding men from leaving Ukraine. They can do more effective work for the war effort if they are allowed to use their expertise, says Ms. Havrina, rather than adding one more gun to the front line.

Her experience in the month of violence since Russia attacked – and since Ukraine began rekindling its national spirit – allows only one prediction, she says: “I don’t believe, I am sure that Ukraine will win.”

For Ms. Havrina, that means being ready to throw Molotov cocktails from her balcony, if Russian troops ever appear below.

She doesn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin will survive the conflict with Ukraine, and adds, “I suppose he understands that we are unbreakable.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Ukrainian couple hold each other in front of the takeaway window of a coffee shop in Odessa on March 7, as residents of the port city prepare for an expected Russian military assault.

Supplies for the distant front

That is the calculation, too, on the other side of town at a coffee shop with a bicycle racing theme, where most customers these days come only to the takeaway window – which is taped, to minimize potential blast damage – between air raid sirens. On one recent frigid day, a couple hold each other while waiting for their coffee.

Inside, a pet dog roams and donations pile up, from bandages to tea, which will be delivered to army outposts up to 60 miles from Odessa.

“A lot of people are afraid to go outside the city ... because of the danger,” says owner Gregorii Bayrak, a bearded and lean bicycle racer whose network of cyclists is among soldiers deployed at those distant camps.

“We are sure those outposts will be the first to meet the enemy,” says Mr. Bayrak, who works directly with army officers to fulfill their needs. He says he is worried, but has “no time to panic” because he is so busy with volunteers.

“Our military is now feeling the support of the world,” he says. “Being in the Ukraine army now is one of the most romantic positions in the world,” he adds with a smile.

“A lot of people didn’t know it, that this country is worth something, worth fighting for. We didn’t feel that before,” he says. “When I think of my own role, I will take a gun or Molotov cocktail, but now I am more an organizer.”

For Mr. Bayrak, that means more than just collecting tins of food.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A bicycle repair shop in Odessa has been converted into a production line for homemade Molotov cocktails and sleeping bags for Ukrainian security forces. Residents of the port city have flocked to civil defense projects as they prepare for an expected Russian military assault.

He steps out onto the sidewalk, and at a shopfront nearby raises the graffiti-covered metal door. Inside is a bicycle repair workshop, its air thick with the smell of gasoline and oil, which has been converted to make Molotov cocktails and homemade sleeping bags for soldiers.

The production line made 170 Molotov cocktails on the first day, then 450 the second. But then production switched to making sleeping bags for troops, and finding tactical gear like gloves and kneepads.

Why the change?

Explains Mr. Bayrak, “A lot of people are doing Molotovs ...”

Russian troops have been violently waging their government’s so-called special military operation for over three weeks now in Ukraine. But on the homefront, state police and state prosecutors are waging a more intangible conflict.

The domestic casualties, so far, are mainly the thousands of Kremlin-critical voices, especially in the media.

Editor’s note: This article was edited in order to conform with Russian legislation criminalizing references to Russia’s current action in Ukraine as anything other than a “special military operation.”

Faced with public shock over the devastation caused by the military operation – which cannot be concealed from Russia’s huge internet-savvy population – Russian authorities have shuttered liberal news organizations. Ekho Moskvy radio station and TV Dozhd, whose chief editor has fled to Georgia, have already fallen victim to the crackdown.

Russian mainstream media have also seen many longtime employees depart, including well-known correspondents and news anchors. Meanwhile, the English-language RT network has been virtually gutted by the sudden outflow of its foreign employees.

Many of those stepping out of their jobs are still not openly protesting against the conflict, but say they are taking “family leave” or “sick time.” Others are being forced to quit due to Western sanctions and bans on Russian media, like the entire staff of RT America and the head of Yandex, which is sometimes described as “Russia’s Google.”

The lure of state media jobs

Attention has been riveted on the example of Marina Ovsyannikova, a longtime producer at Russia’s flagship Channel One state TV station who burst onto the evening news set with a dramatic anti-war poster, in a protest that has since been seen around the world. In a pre-recorded video she explained herself in terms that sound typical of youngish, middle-class professional Russians.

Reuters

Ms. Ovsyannikova leaves a court building in Moscow after having been sentenced to a 30,000 ruble ($310) fine for her newscast protest.

She is the child of a mixed Russian-Ukrainian marriage – as are large numbers of Russians – and had worked uncomplainingly in the bowels of state TV for years, taking her paycheck and averting her gaze. But she said that recent events forced her to confront the ugly truth. She blamed one person, Vladimir Putin, for what she described as a crime that has subjected all Russians to profound shame. She was arrested, but subsequently let go with a fairly minor fine.

Alexey Kovalyov, an editor with the Latvia-based opposition news outlet Meduza, says he could easily have been in Ms. Ovsyannikova’s shoes.

He worked in a comfortable job with the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency until he was forced out in an internal takeover by hard-liners in 2013. Compelled to find another job, Mr. Kovalyov eventually found his place with Meduza, which has produced some of Russia’s best alternative journalism and been declared a “foreign agent” by authorities.

A few days ago, Mr. Kovalyov and his wife quietly slipped across the border into Latvia, where he has resumed his work with Meduza, whose website is now blocked in Russia.

“If I hadn’t lost my job in 2013, I could still be sitting there” like Ms. Ovsyannikova, he says. “After all, I wasn’t making propaganda. I was mostly translating articles from the foreign press into Russian. Like so many others, I could tell myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, just performing my job.”

Still in touch with old friends from Russia’s media world, Mr. Kovalyov says many are in shock at what has happened. “People are telling me that they are devastated, feel blindsided. They’ve continued for eight years,” since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, “doing ‘nothing wrong.’ People now feel shame over their complicity. And yeah, that could have been me.

“This is the nature” of the Putin model, he says. “It’s a set of compromises where good people work in bad institutions, for a bad regime. They accepted the deal, in which the Kremlin took care of politics and they enjoyed the rewards and didn’t get involved. We can now see this order crashing before our very eyes,” he says.

Mr. Kovalyov says that Meduza is still going strong and retain most of their Russian readers who use virtual private networks (VPNs) on their computers, something Meduza has taken pains to educate them about.

“It can end at any moment”

For many years Alexey Venediktov steered Ekho Moskvy, the scrappy Moscow radio station that was owned by the media wing of the state natural gas monopoly Gazprom, but which provided a regular perch for some of the Kremlin’s harshest critics. That’s all over now. The station has been closed down, and Mr. Venediktov says he is unemployed.

AP

Alexey Venediktov, chief editor of Ekho Moskvy, speaks to journalists in Moscow on March 3, 2022. The Russian government closed the station, along with the country's top independent TV channel, for their coverage of Ukraine.

“When the military operation was declared, propaganda had to be total,” he says. “It’s odd, if there is no war, why do we have military censorship?”

Ekho Moskvy’s staff has scattered, he says. “Modern technology enables some to continue with their own information channels. But, if tomorrow YouTube or Telegram cease to exist, there will be nothing left. For former journalists, it’s now a struggle for survival. People have families to support, rent to pay.”

The single opposition news outlet still standing is Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Its editor, Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, together with a Filipina journalist, for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

The paper survives by striking a difficult compromise, says Nadezhda Prusenkova, Novaya Gazeta’s press secretary.

“We pulled any materials that did not meet the demands of the new law on fake news,” she says. “We have to work under conditions of military censorship, and limit ourselves. Not only can we not call [it] a war, but we may not report about what’s happening in Ukraine or anything our armed forces are doing. Otherwise, there is criminal punishment of 15 years in prison.

“We thought about closing down, had a stormy staff meeting, but decided we had a responsibility to continue. There is a lot we can do under the existing conditions, a lot of valuable stories to report, and as long as we can go on, we will. We realize it can end at any moment,” she adds.

Some observers see the censorship as auguring a profound social crisis. Things can’t go on like this for very long, says Boris Kagarlitsky, a veteran left-wing Kremlin critic, who holds the distinction of having served jail time for his dissenting views under three different Soviet and Russian regimes.

“Russia’s elite knows that there is a storm coming, the Putin order is falling apart, and this is all going to end very badly,” he forecasts. “Our generation already experienced revolutions and political dramas galore. So, it looks like we’re headed for another one.”

Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AP

President Joe Biden labeled Russian President Vladimir Putin, shown here chairing a meeting in Moscow on March 10, a “war criminal,” and on March 23, the U.S. issued a formal assessment that war crimes have been committed during the invasion. Multiple countries and international organizations are already investigating.

Last week, soon after granting $800 million of military aid to Ukraine, President Joe Biden responded to a reporter’s question with his harshest description of Russia’s invading leader yet.

“I think he is a war criminal,” President Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The unexpected comment echoed a unanimous resolution the day before from the Senate, labeling Mr. Putin the same thing. In terms of accountability, though, it’s just that – a label – until proved in court. On March 23, the U.S. government issued a formal assessment that war crimes have been committed during the invasion of Ukraine. Multiple countries and international organizations are already investigating. Even if their findings resulted in charges, there’s no guarantee any Russian leaders would ever face trial.

What is a war crime? 

“The classic definition is serious violations of international humanitarian law that give rise to individual criminal responsibility,” says Rachel Kerr, a professor at King’s College London and co-director of the War Crimes Research Group. 

That means two things. One, infractions of international humanitarian law – a decades-old patchwork of treaties like the Geneva and Hague conventions – are severe. Two, a person or group of people is responsible, not a country.  

War crimes include attacks that intentionally target civilians or civilian property, or military objectives that recklessly endanger civilians. They can also include use of munitions, such as chemical weapons, that inflict severe or indiscriminate damage. 

Because war inevitably involves civilian harm, says Professor Kerr, the key rule is proportionality – any target or tool requires a proportionate military objective. Intentionally bombing a school is off-limits. But bombing a school housing enemy troops or ammunition may be more complicated.  

“It’s military necessity versus humanity,” says Professor Kerr. 

Peter Dejong/AP/File

The International Criminal Court, shown here in The Hague, Netherlands, in March 2021, has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

How are war crimes investigated? 

It depends on who’s investigating. Because potential war crimes are occurring on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine has unquestioned authority to investigate. But war crimes operate under universal jurisdiction – any country has the right to investigate, regardless of location. Germany, Spain, and Poland have all begun their own inquiries. 

The International Criminal Court (ICC), as well, launched an investigation on March 2, and an unprecedented 41 member states petitioned for one, says Ryan Goodman, professor of human rights law at New York University.

“I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine,” wrote ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan in a statement before the investigation began. (War crimes, unlike crimes against humanity, can only occur during armed conflict, can be committed against combatants and civilians, and can be isolated incidents.)

The process is arduous, beginning with specific allegations – such as a strike on a hospital or fleeing civilians – and builds a record of what happened and who’s responsible through eyewitnesses, videos, and other verified evidence. Then investigators attempt to assess intent and information at the time of the strike, which likely requires inferences because Russia almost certainly won’t cooperate. 

“That’s not an easy task, especially with the conflict ongoing,” says Karima Bennoune, visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an international human rights lawyer. “Every day there’s more things that have to be investigated, and the conflict itself is a significant obstacle to the investigation.”

Human rights groups, Ukrainian citizens, and the United Nations Human Rights Council are all helping document evidence in support. While each investigation has its own timeline, some could take years, says Professor Bennoune.

Mstyslav Chernov/AP

Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka points at the smoke rising after an airstrike on a maternity hospital, in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 9. The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation of war crimes in Ukraine, and an unprecedented 41 member states petitioned the court for one.

What consequences can investigations bring?

“At the moment, it’s so hard to see any,” says Professor Kerr. 

The ICC doesn’t conduct trials in absentia – defendants must be in custody. When charges are filed, that rule can amount to a travel ban because leaders won’t risk being taken into custody outside their borders. As long as they remain in power, leaders like Mr. Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are sheltered. 

Russia, not an ICC member, wouldn’t be the first major power to fight the court’s legitimacy. The United States isn’t a member either and has resisted investigation of Americans, says Professor Goodman. Since the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration has begun an internal review of its policy toward the ICC. 

That doesn’t mean the investigations don’t matter, Professor Bennoune says. 

“It’s very positive that there has been such a strong reaction to the reports of war crimes that we’ve seen,” she says. “I think that public outrage and response is critical to actually trying to stop further war crimes.”

In Ahmed Al Qubeilat’s village of Mleih in central Jordan, unemployment is a fact of life, especially for the young.

His cousins are jobless. So too is his neighbor, who holds a Ph.D. in medicine. Mr. Qubeilat has not found work since graduating with a B.A. in business administration in 2019.

Yet he now subscribes to the mantra that if you need a job – or a job done – do it yourself. He ran for local office.

“Now is the time to break the cycle and get involved,” the 27-year-old candidate says outside an election tent next to his home. “No one is more capable in addressing my generation’s challenges than we are.”

Jordan’s local elections this week featured something unexpected: a surge of unemployed young people who feel neglected by the political system running for office to create change themselves.

In what analysts are calling a “dress rehearsal” for the kingdom’s much-ballyhooed political reforms, more than 4,640 candidates from across the country ran for municipal and governorate council posts Tuesday.

Yet out of the many, a few dozen stood out: candidates in their 20s, all unemployed university graduates in the kingdom’s outer provinces. That is the exact demographic that has borne the brunt of the resource-poor kingdom’s economic crisis.

“In rural areas outside the capital, there is a high presence of youth, fewer opportunities, and greater challenges,” says Amer Al Sabaileh, a Jordanian geopolitical analyst. “Their parents have spent all their savings and resources to send them to university, and they are stuck at home unable to start their own lives or improve that of their families.”

A generation tired of waiting

Some 70% of Jordan’s 6.5 million citizens are under the age of 35, and 63% are under the age of 30. While unemployment hovers around 24% nationwide, unemployment among those under 30 is at 50%. University graduates spend years, even a decade or more, without work.

For some, their inability to move forward has led to apathy, rising drug abuse, depression, and a silent epidemic of suicides. Young Jordanians have climbed to the top of electricity towers and threatened to jump to protest their lack of prospects.

Yet these young Jordanians running for office have filled their years of waiting with something else: workshops and paid internships provided by royal foundations, international NGOs, the United Nations, and USAID designed to enhance their employability. The skills developed include public speaking and civic engagement and advocacy techniques.

“I have these skills, I have some experience, and I have many solutions to improve my community. Why shouldn’t I enter politics to help address our community’s problems?” says Nour Alawamreh.

The 26-year-old agricultural engineer launched her candidacy for the regional governorate council in the summer of 2021. Her goals included upgrading her local health center and scaling up her forestation project to reduce the flash-flooding that regularly hits her hometown of Maeen, in central Jordan.

How did she overcome resistance by some in her community to a “young upstart” running for office? By starting small, she says.

“I am careful not to overpromise,” Ms. Alawamreh says, stressing that she would first evaluate the provincial budget and available resources before proposing any project.

Ideas versus experience

The youth influx is an upset of the country’s established political culture.

In Jordanian politics, voters rarely flock to the exciting new prospect. Few fawn over fresh-faced candidates full of new ideas and youthful energy.

Instead, for most of the country’s history since independence, Jordanian voters have gravitated toward candidates with experience and long track records, such as a secretary-general at a ministry, a director at the phosphates factory, or the local school headmaster.

Taylor Luck

Ahmed Al Qubeilat (left), a local council candidate, speaks with a voter outside his election campaign tent in the village of Mleih, Jordan, March 22, 2022. “We had to break down the barrier that has prevented young people from taking part in political life,” he says. “All I ask is for people to just hear out my ideas.”

Another current in Jordanian politics is tribalism, with an entire family and wider clan pressured to support their candidate, a senior relative or that of an allied tribe.

It has led Jordanian voters to cast ballots for relatives or familiar faces with little debate on policy, sending stone-faced and graying men and bureaucrats who insist on doing things “the traditional way” to fill posts on municipal councils and in parliament.

“The experience gap was one of the biggest challenges we’ve had to overcome,” Mr. Qubeilat admits. “We had to break down the barrier that has prevented young people from taking part in political life.”

Rather than “experience,” the young Jordanians say they pitched something else: policy.

For Mr. Qubeilat, that meant sitting down with each voter to explain his electoral platform of rejuvenating farming, creating spinoff agricultural and tourism jobs, and hosting job training events in the village.

“All I ask is for people to just hear out my ideas,” Mr. Qubeilat says.

“We are trying to change the entire culture around voting, where the best ideas win,” says Mohammed Breizat, 29, an unemployed candidate also from Mleih.

People “feel for us”

Some older voters may be receptive.

“With one economic crisis after another, we can no longer afford to be governed by tribalism,” says Abu Maher, a 54-year-old voter in Madaba, central Jordan. “We should give young people a chance to improve their future,” he adds, though he declines to say whether he voted for a young candidate.

In the village of Lib, Qusay Alfugha, 28, darts and dashes across the courtyard of a polling center with a grin on his face, racing to the finish line to seal votes. 

Unemployed for the last eight years, he has modest but clear plans, including solar-powered streetlights, repaving streets, and expanding the government health clinic.

“Every household has an unemployed young man or woman waiting for a future that is not arriving. People don’t just support us, they feel for us,” Mr. Alfugha says as he escorts an elderly woman on his elbow to her registered polling booth. “This is helping us unleash our potential.”

Overcoming the trust gap

But significant challenges to opening Jordan’s political system remain.

Political parties were sidelined in local elections, and a mere 29.6% of eligible Jordanians voted in polls that saw rampant vote buying. The country’s opposition is marginalized and divided.

Despite calls by the king for young people to make their voices heard, the government has sent mixed messages by jailing young Jordanians for critical social media posts and joining protests.

“There is a trust gap among young Jordanians. Can young Jordanians join the political process and express themselves freely without paying a heavy price?” asks Oraib Rantawi, director of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies.

Yet all agree on the need to attract youth into the political process.

“If we can encourage youths to take part in local politics, it will reflect positively on the society as a whole and boost these areas that suffer from neglected services” and a lack of development, says Mr. Sabaileh, the analyst.

With votes still being certified Wednesday, it was unclear how many young candidates had won their seats. But already the candidates say they have an eye on the next local election, and one day, parliament.

“No matter what the end result is, it is enough that we as youths are able to get election experience,” says Ms. Alawamreh, the agricultural engineer, who according to early returns has won her regional council seat. “To see young people run for election, just to know that we can take part in the political process, that is the first step toward change.”

Three hours before polls’ closure on Tuesday, Mr. Alfugha rushes to a neighbor entering the polling station.

“Can I count on your vote?” Mr. Alfugha pleads in a last-minute pitch.

His neighbor smiles.

“Even if you don’t have my vote, you have my support,” she says. “You are the youth; you are our future. It’s your turn.”

Reuters

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The confirmation hearings this week of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to join the Supreme Court have brought fresh scrutiny to one of the most emotional and subjective aspects of law: punishment.

During one exchange on Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley questioned the judge about her decision to sentence a man convicted of child pornography to just three months in prison. It reflected a pattern of leniency, the Missouri Republican charged, in Ms. Jackson’s approach to such cases.

Ms. Jackson tried to explain the range of factors that a judge is required by law to consider in determining punishment. She noted the defendant’s age. He was 18, just out of high school. The senator was unmoved. “I am questioning your discretion, your judgment,” he said.

That kind of exchange has become standard in Senate hearings to fill vacancies on the highest bench. Yet it sometimes obscures a shared recognition in the United States of all the aspects of justice, from deterrence to rehabilitation, that fulfill the purpose of a court sentence.

Since 1984, when Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission, there has been growing concern about how to fix the many disparities in sentencing. That focus has gained urgency in recent years as the country has grappled with how to decrease the size of the prison population. The U.S. incarcerates 664 out of 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

One example of fixing those disparities is the First Step Act. Passed by Congress four years ago, it enables incarcerated people to seek reduced sentences based on “compassionate release” and to ease mandatory minimum sentences. As a former member of the commission, Judge Jackson helped identify those criteria. But she also noted that Congress has not updated sentencing guidelines since 2003. This nearly two-decade lapse has left judges to rely on out-of-date guidelines for determining punishment even as changes in technology and social norms have focused attention beyond the length of sentences.

“Part of my sentencings was about redirecting the defendants’ attention,” she said in response to Mr. Hawley. “It’s not just about how much time a person spends in prison. It’s about understanding the harm of ... this behavior.”

That struck a chord.

“You want to get them to own up to what they’ve done in these cases,” the senator acknowledged. “And I thought that was powerful. And I thought that was right.”

This week’s Senate hearings have offered a valuable service in enabling citizens to overhear debate about legal principles and modern points of law. At a time of waning trust in the Supreme Court, a helpful debate about the nature and purpose of punishment revealed deeper insights about the values that define justice. That can only help lift society in selecting the best jurists to the court.