(CNN) Last week's combative Senate Judiciary Committee hearings over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh looked at times like a flash-forward to the racially infused politics that may increasingly consume the court, and the nation, through the 2020s.

If the Senate confirms Kavanaugh, which still appears likely despite sharpening Democratic questions about his honesty, he will cement a five-member majority of Republican-appointed justices. Given their ages, those five justices could control the Supreme Court for the next 15 years or more. Over that period, demographers project, the nation inexorably will grow more diverse in virtually every measurable way, from religious preference to sexual orientation and racial and ethnic composition.

That looks like a surefire formula for heightening conflict. Each of the Republican-appointed justices has demonstrated resistance to measures designed to protect or promote the interests of groups that often have been marginalized in American history, from racial minorities to gays and lesbians. And like a tightening tourniquet, the tension is likely to grow between the opposition of the Republican-appointed justices to laws that they feel unduly disadvantage whites and religiously devout Christians, and the calls from those growing minority groups for greater opportunity and inclusion.

"Ultimately if you have a court that has a vision of America that is narrow, that is not reflective of the changing demographics and the needs of the country, then the Constitution becomes a stale document and the Supreme Court becomes viewed as partisan and political," Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups opposing Kavanaugh's nomination, said in an interview Monday. "And ultimately that serves to hurt our democracy and the rule of law because people will have much less confidence that that institution is fair."

That coming collision was vividly previewed during last week's hearings, particularly when Kavanaugh faced close questioning from Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, who are the two most junior Democrats on the panel and also potential presidential candidates in 2020. Booker, who is African-American, and Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, faced criticism for some of their tactics, such as Harris suggesting Kavanaugh had conducted conversations about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation without providing specific evidence.

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