Issues

Anger, rage and betrayal swept through the U.S. political system in the recent presidential campaign, and they make for a combustible combination. Where do our politics go after passing the boiling point?

It sounds like something from the Middle Ages or the Salem witch trials: Incarcerated women being shackled during labor and childbirth to keep them from fleeing. But the practice does not exist in the distant past.

Perhaps the biggest prize for the winner of the 2016 presidential election is the ability to shape the Supreme Court and the judicial branch. We spoke with Allan Ides, professor and Christopher N. May Chair at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, about prospects for the U.S. Supreme Court in the context of a new administration that will take the White House in January 2017. Early in his career, Ides served as clerk to the Honorable Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and Associate Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was interviewed by Editor Joseph Wakelee-Lynch.

South Sudan’s independence in July 2011 was a moment of great hope in Africa. It followed an overwhelmingly popular referendum vote and seemed to promise an end to decades-long violence. Jok Madut Jok, LMU professor of history who was born in the village of Marol, has helped establish schools in Marol, written books about Sudan and served in his new nation’s government. South Sudan remains in strife, but Jok is helping make a better history.

Sean Dempsey, S.J., is assistant professor of history in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. He specializes in urban, religious and U.S. history. He is particularly interested in the intersection of U.S. religious traditions, particularly Christianity, and political visions. In the midst of the nation’s two main party conventions, we asked him what he has heard as Republican and Democratic leaders have explained themselves and their vision to the American people. Dempsey was interviewed by Editor Joseph Wakelee-Lynch.

If a map of promising U.S. fracking sites were drawn, a second map depicting sites of heated controversy over the practice would almost be identical to the first. Prominent on both would be wells in states like North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Kentucky, where Catholic nuns have refused permission to oil companies to build on their property a pipeline carrying liquid byproducts of fracking. Add LMU’s backyard to those maps, specifically the Inglewood Oil Field in the nearby Baldwin Hills. Here’s why.—The Editor

U.S. immigration policy has been a divisive political and moral issue for decades. The Catholic Church’s call for justice for immigrants — from Pope Francis and Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez to the sponsoring religious orders of Loyola Marymount University — has been consistently clear and strong. We asked Michael A. Genovese, professor of political science, to shed another light on the subject, reflecting on the economic importance of U.S. immigration reform.—The Editor