Forms of Government
A type of government in which the monarch has unrestricted political power.
What is an Absolute Monarchy?
This fraction of the state legislatures or of state conventions is required to ratify a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution....
3/4
A requirement in the 5th Amendment, that the government follow established legal procedures.
What is Due Process?
Organized by the Sons of Liberty, this 1773 event involved colonists, many disguised as Native Americans, destroying a shipment of goods in protest of a British monopoly and tax.
What is The Boston Tea Party
Government where power is held by the people.
What is a Democracy?
The absence of government, leading to a state of disorder.
What is Anarchy?
An agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection.
What is the Social Contract?
Powers that are neither given to the national government nor denied to the states, mentioned in the Tenth Amendment.
What are Reserved Powers?
An armed uprising in Massachusetts that exposed the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
What was Shay's Rebellion?
A system where power is shared between national and state governments.
What is Federalism?
The principle that the government's power is restricted by law, usually in a written constitution.
What is a Limited Government?
A series of 85 essays written to persuade the citizens of New York to adopt the US Constitution.
What are the Federalist Papers?
The purpose of this document is to protect the rights of the individual against the government.
What is the the Bill of Rights?
The plan presented at the Constitutional Convention that proposed a bicameral legislature with representation based on population.
What was the Virginia Plan?
This is the process in Article VI by which the Constitution can be formally changed, requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states.
What is the Amendment Process?
A system of government where supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation.
What is a Republic
The clause in Article VI of the US Constitution that states federal law is supreme over state laws when there is a conflict.
What is the Supremacy Clause?
This idea, that every person is entitled to the protection of the law, is discussed in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments regarding due process and equal protection.
What is Rule of Law?
Those who opposed the ratification of the US Constitution because they felt it gave too much power to the national government.
Who were the Anti-Federalists?
This principle is the division of government power among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, each with distinct responsibilities.
What is the separation of powers?
The principle that the authority of the government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives.
What is Popular Sovereignty?
The first governing document of the United States, which created a weak central government.
What were the Articles of Confederation?
These are protected by the Bill of Rights and include freedoms like speech, religion, and the press.
What are Individual Rights?
This clause, also known as the Necessary and Proper Clause, grants Congress powers not explicitly written in the Constitution.
What is the Elastic Clause?
This settled the disagreement between large and small states over legislative representation by creating a bicameral Congress: a Senate with equal representation and a House of Representatives based on population.
What is the Great Compromise (or Connecticut Compromise)?