Five Freedoms
This amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
What is the First Amendment?
This amendment protects the right of the people to “keep and bear arms.”
What is the Second Amendment?
This amendment says no soldier can be housed in any home in peacetime without the owner’s consent.
What is the Third Amendment?
This amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
What is the Fourth Amendment?
This amendment protects against double jeopardy, self-incrimination, and guarantees due process.
What is the Fifth Amendment?
This amendment guarantees a “speedy and public trial” in criminal cases.
What is the Sixth Amendment?
This amendment bans excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.
What is the Eighth Amendment?
This amendment says that listing certain rights in the Constitution does not mean people don’t have other rights too.
What is the Ninth Amendment?
This article of the Constitution created the judicial branch and mentioned “one supreme Court.”
What is Article III?
This First Amendment freedom lets you gather peacefully for protests or demonstrations.
What is freedom of assembly?
The Founders connected the Second Amendment to local citizen forces used for defense, known by this name.
What is a militia?
The British laws that forced colonists to house and feed soldiers in their homes were known by this name.
What were the Quartering Acts?
In most cases, police need this document, based on probable cause, that describes the place to be searched and items to be seized.
What is a warrant?
You cannot be tried twice for the exact same offense because the Fifth Amendment bans this.
What is double jeopardy?
The Seventh Amendment guarantees a civil jury when the amount in dispute is more than this old-school dollar amount.
What is twenty dollars?
Bail cannot be set impossibly high just to keep someone locked up before trial because the Eighth Amendment forbids this.
What is excessive bail?
The phrase “rights retained by the people” refers to this category of rights that exist even if not written down word-for-word.
What are natural or unenumerated rights?
This 1789 law, signed by George Washington, actually set up the first Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.
What is the Judiciary Act of 1789?
Wearing a black armband to protest a war at school is an example of this kind of protected expression from Tinker v. Des Moines.
What is symbolic speech?
In 2008, this Supreme Court case said individuals have a constitutional right to own a firearm for self-defense in the home.
What is District of Columbia v. Heller?
One major reason colonists hated quartering soldiers was that it invaded this basic expectation inside their homes.
What is privacy?
Evidence found by police in an illegal search can’t be used in court because of this rule, extended to the states in Mapp v. Ohio.
What is the Exclusionary Rule?
When you “plead the Fifth,” you are using this right not to answer questions that could get you in trouble.
What is the right against self-incrimination?
One reason the Seventh Amendment was added was that colonists complained the British sometimes denied them this type of trial in property disputes.
What is a civil jury trial?
In Weems v. United States, the Court said punishment must be proportional to the crime, helping define this key Eighth Amendment phrase.
What is cruel and unusual punishment?
The Tenth Amendment is all about this constitutional principle that divides power between the national government and the states.
What is federalism?
Each year, the Court gets about 7,000 requests but hears only around 80 cases, usually by granting this special order whose Latin name means “to be more fully informed.”
What is a writ of certiorari?
The government cannot set up an official national church because of this part of the First Amendment.
What is the Establishment Clause?
Modern debates about universal background checks, assault-weapon bans, and red flag laws are really arguments about balancing individual rights with this public concern.
What is community or public safety?
A skit where soldiers eat all your food and sleep in Grandma’s rocking chair would dramatize this kind of government problem that the Third Amendment was meant to stop.
What is government overreach or abuse of power?
Stopping someone briefly and patting them down for weapons based on reasonable suspicion is allowed under this famous case.
What is Terry v. Ohio?
The government must follow fair procedures before taking your life, liberty, or property; this is known by this two-word phrase.
What is due process?
The Sixth Amendment gives you the right to confront and question the people who testify against you; this process is called what in court?
What is cross-examination?
The Court has said the death penalty cannot be used for juveniles or people with intellectual disabilities, using this idea that society’s understanding changes over time.
What are evolving standards of decency?
The amendment reassured Anti-Federalists by saying that only powers actually delegated to the United States belong to the national government, and all others are what?
What are reserved to the states or the people?
Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and then hold this kind of term length so they are insulated from political pressure.
What is a lifetime appointment (during good behavior)?
Writing letters, emails, or petitions asking the government to change a law uses this specific First Amendment right.
What is the right to petition the government?
The Second Amendment is only 27 words long, but has generated countless cases and arguments, illustrating that even very short constitutional text can have this kind of impact.
What is far-reaching or monumental legal impact?
Even though we don’t usually house soldiers today, the Third Amendment still supports modern debates about government staying out of homes and lives—especially around this broader concept.
What is the right to privacy?
In Katz v. United States, the Court said the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places, and focuses on this kind of expectation.
What is a reasonable expectation of privacy?
When the government takes private property for a public project, it must pay fair market value under this clause of the Fifth Amendment.
What is the Takings Clause (just compensation)?
The Sixth Amendment says you must be told exactly what you’re being accused of and what evidence is being used. This is the right to be what?
What is the right to be informed of the charges?
Under Estelle v. Gamble, prisons that show “deliberate indifference” to serious medical needs can violate this amendment’s protection.
What is the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment?
The 9th/10th Amendment worksheet explains that protecting rights by limiting government “powers” instead of listing every “right” shows a structural way to guard freedom. Which two words summarize this tension?
What are powers versus rights?
Name all 9 of the Supreme Court Justices
Justice Roberts
Justice Sotomayor
Justice Thomas
Justice Alito
Justice Kagan
Justice Grosch
Justice Kavannah
Justice Barret
Justice Brown Jackson