Foundations of Government
This primary purpose of government protects citizens from foreign invasion and domestic threats; examples include military and law enforcement.
What is protection?
Article III 'vests' judicial power in this court, whose judges hold office during 'good behavior.'
What is the Supreme Court?
This term names the US political system dominated by Democrats and Republicans, positioned broadly left and right on the political spectrum.
What is the two-party system?
This ancient Babylonian code is famous for 'an eye for an eye' and influenced later debates about proportional punishment and this Amendment addressing cruel punishments.
What is Hammurabi's Code and the 8th Amendment?
This British policy of limited interference with colonial affairs allowed local representative institutions like the House of Burgesses to develop.
What is Salutary Neglect?
Name of the system where a ruler's power is unlimited, contrasted with the system where a ruler must follow a nation's constitution.
What is Absolute Monarchy vs. Constitutional Monarchy?
This power, established in Marbury v. Madison, allows federal courts to decide whether laws or executive acts violate the Constitution.
What is Judicial Review?
In this nominating method, voters cast private ballots; in this party-run method, voters meet and debate before choosing delegates.
What is Primaries and Caucuses?
This Enlightenment philosopher wrote that people possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property - a concept that influenced the Declaration of Independence.
Who is John Locke?
One weakness of the Articles of Confederation was the federal government's lack of this power to raise revenue; another was its lack of this branch to enforce laws.
What is the Power to Tax and the Executive Branch?
This trio of government types is classified as 'one, few, or all' to indicate who holds political power.
What is Autocracy, Oligarchy, and Democracy?
Also called the Elastic Clause, this constitutional provision lets Congress create laws needed to carry out its enumerated powers.
What is the Necessary and Proper Clause?
Under the winner-take-all rule used by most states, this body, not the national popular vote, formally elects the president and requires 270 votes to win.
Montesquieu argued for this idea; the Constitution reflects this idea by dividing government into three branches to avoid concentration of power.
What are Separation of Powers?
This compromise, proposed by Connecticut delegates, created a bicameral legislature with proportional representation in one house and equal representation in the other.
What is the Great Compromise?
This economic concept refers to services like public schools and infrastructure that everyone uses and are funded by taxes.
What are Public Goods?
A presidential directive that directs how the executive branch enforces laws but remains subject to judicial review and Congressional limitation.
What is an Executive Order?
Term for drawing oddly-shaped districts to dilute an opponent's voting power (cracking) or concentrate it in a few districts (packing).
What is Gerrymandering?
This ancient document was one of the first recorded examples of self-government.
What is the Mayflower Compact?
Under this compromise, enslaved persons were counted at this fraction for purposes of representation and taxation.
What is the Three-Fifths Compromise?
A political system in which power is divided between a central authority and regional governments.
What is Federalism?
This clause, at the center of Gibbons v. Ogden, gives Congress power to regulate trade among the states.
What is the Commerce Clause?
The 19th Amendment prohibited voter discrimination based on gender; the 15th Amendment prohibited voter discrimination based on this.
What is race?
Collectively, Enlightenment philosophers, the Magna Carta, and English legal traditions pressured the Founders to include this first set of protections in the Constitution, a compromise that addressed Anti-Federalists concerns.
What are the Bill of Rights?
This compromise allowed Congress to regulate commerce but barred it from banning this specific practice for twenty years.
What is the Slave Trade (or Commerce) Compromise?