Lesson 1
A detailed, written plan for government.
What is a constitution?
Meeting of state delegates in 1787 leading to adoption of a new Constitution.
What is the Constitutional Convention?
The three main parts to the Constitution.
What are the preamble, articles, and amendments?
The idea that power lies with the people.
What is popular sovereignty?
A legislature consisting of two parts, or houses.
What is bicameral?
The first constitution of the United States.
What is the Articles of Confederation?
Agreement providing a dual system of congressional representation.
What is the Great Compromise?
The lawmaking branch of government.
What is the legislative branch?
The principal that a ruler or a government is not all-powerful; a government that can do only what the people allow it to do.
What is limited government?
A form of government in which power is divided between the federal, or national, government and the states.
What is federalism?
A law that set up a plan for surveying western lands; this method is still used today.
What is the Ordinance of 1785?
Agreement providing that enslaved persons would count as three-fifths of other persons in determining representation in Congress.
What is the Three-Fifths Compromise?
The branch of government that carries out laws.
What is the executive branch?
The split of authority among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
What is separation of powers?
Any change in the Constitution.
What is a amendment?
1787 law that set up a government for the Northwest Territory and served as a model for other new territories and as a plan for admitting new states to the Union.
What is the Northwest Ordinance?
A group of people named by each state legislature to select the president and vice president.
What is the Electoral College?
The branch of government that interprets laws.
What is the judicial branch?
A system in which each branch of government is able to check, or restrain, the power of the others.
What is checks and balances?
The clause in Article VI of the Constitution that makes federal laws prevail over state laws when there is a conflict.
What is the supremacy clause?
An uprising of Massachusetts farmers who did not want to lose their farms because of debt caused by heavy state taxes after the American Revolution.
What is Shays's Rebellion?
A series of essays written to defend the Constitution.
What are the Federalist Papers?
Following the constitution word for word.
What is strict interpretation?
A form of government in which power is divided between the federal, or national, government and the states.
What is federalism?
Those who opposed ratification of the Constitution.
What are Anti-Federalists?