Politics
Groups of like-minded people who try to influence the government.
What are factions?
Part of Article I, Section 8, which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states.
What is the commerce clause?
The division of power across the local, state, and federal governments.
What is federalism?
Basic political freedoms that protect citizens from governmental abuses of power.
What are civil liberties?
Rights that guarantee individuals' freedom from discrimination.
What are civil rights?
The process that determines what the government does.
What is politics?
Powers explicitly granted to Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court in the first three articles of the Constitution.
What are enumerated powers?
Responsibilities for particular policy areas that are shared by local, state, and local governments.
What are concurrent powers?
Part of the Fourteenth Amendment that forbids states from denying life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
What is the due process clause?
The idea that racial segregation was acceptable as long as the separate facilities were of equal quality.
What is the separate but equal doctrine?
A political group of people who prefer very limited government and tend to be conservative on issues such as welfare policy, environmental policy, and public support for education, but are liberal on issues of personal liberty like free speech, abortion, and the legalization of drugs.
What are libertarians?
A concept that the people recognize to authority of the state to govern, and in turn the government protects the rights and freedoms of the people.
What is a social contract?
A form of federalism in which national and state governments work together to provide services efficiently.
What is cooperative federalism?
The Supreme Court uses this test to determine whether a practice violates the First Amendment's establishment clause.
What is the Lemon Test?
Relating to actions or circumstances that occur "by law," such as the legally enforced segregation of schools in the American South before the 1960s.
An economic system based on competition among businesses without government interference.
What is a free market?
An uprising of about 4,000 men is Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787 to protest oppressive laws and gain payment of war debts. This rebellion prompted calls for a new constitution.
What was Shay's rebellion?
What are categorical grants?
Nonverbal expression, such as the use of signs of symbols. It benefits from many of the same constitutional protections as verbal speech because of its expressive value.
What is symbolic speech?
The use of evidence to suggest that differences in the behavior of two groups can rationalize unequal treatment of these groups.
What is the rational basis test?
A cohesive set of ideas and beliefs used to organize and evaluate the political world.
What is ideology?
A compromise between large and small states in which Congress would have two houses. The Senate would have two legislators per states and the House of Representatives would have representation based on state populations.
What was the Great Compromise?
A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1819 that Maryland did not have the power to tax the Second Bank of the United States and that Congress did have to power to create the Bank under the necessary and proper clause and the supremacy clause.
What was McCulloch v. Maryland?
The principle that illegally or unconstitutionally acquired evidence cannot be used in a criminal trial.
What is exclusionary rule?
Policies to help people who have been historically excluded of under-represented have better access to higher education or employment.
What is affirmative action?