Government Exam 1
Problems with establishing democracy in Iraq are, according to the text, chiefly a function of the fact that
"There is no meaningful Iraqi identity."
A survey of House members during a nonelection year showed that most lawmakers made an average of _________ trips back to his or her district each year.
40
About how many requests for review does the U.S. Supreme Court receive each year?
9,000
Which metaphor best describes cooperative federalism?
A marble cake
Which president asked, after being challenged on his aggressive expansion of presidential power, "Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution?"
Abraham Lincoln
The current justice most likely to cast the "deciding vote" in a 5-4 split Supreme Court case is
Anthony Kennedy.
The Supreme Court case Lawrence and Garner v. Texas overturned the previous decision of
Bowers v. Hardwick.
Why do most democracies give power to representatives rather than directly to citizens?
Bringing large numbers of citizens together for discussions and votes is difficult, decisions may require
The Department of ________ is the largest government department in terms of number of employees.
Defense
The amendment permitting black American men to vote is the
Fifteenth Amendment
The __________ has been construed to provide protection for the individual from the actions of a repressive state government.
Fourteenth Amendment
The _________ Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures
Fourth
_____________ was the fist case to establish that the Bill of Rights would be applied more broadly than the Supreme Court initially held.
Gitlow v. New York
A president can be impeached by the _________ and tried and removed from office by the __________.
House; Senate
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson's statement that "all men are created equal" is similar to which theorist's belief that government is based on the "consent of the governed"?
John Locke
Which justice famously wrote in the Marbury v. Madison decision, "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is"?
John Marshall
Using the state to redistribute income is a policy based on
Karl Marx
Which of the following philosophers is usually associated with socialism?
Karl Marx
Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate" is part of the broad Supreme Court interpretation of the elastic clause in the case of
McCulloch v. Maryland.
The _____________ is a group of advisers who help the president mold a coherent approach to foreign policy
National Security Council
The __________ Amendment states, "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Ninth
_______________ is a Supreme Court justice's most critical function.
Opinion writing
Which of the following best describes the concept of civil rights?
Powers and privileges guaranteed to individuals and protected against arbitrary withdrawal by the government or individuals
_________ theory prescribes that a group should decide to do what the majority of its participant wants to do.
Procedural
The __________ pressed for legislation requiring cost estimates and analysis of the impact of agency regulations.
Republicans
__________ made important strides in foreign relations, completing an important arms control agreement with the Soviet Union and beginning negotiations with China, a country with which the United States had no formal prior diplomatic relations.
Richard Nixon
Which document proclaimed, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not ... expressly delegated to the United States"?
The Articles of Confederation
Which of the following statements concerning Brown v. Board of Education is not correct
The Court decision was 8-1, with one dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fred Vinson
A popular election is the primary mechanism for democratic government in which model?
The majoritarian model
According to the New Jersey Plan, how was representation to be structured in Congress
There would be one house, and all states would have equal representation in it.
The __________ Amendment provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Thirteenth
Which political philosopher expressed the sentiment that life in a state of nature would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?"
Thomas Hobbes
_________ requires foreigners who are not citizens living in the United States to register with the government and carry their registration papers.
U.S. Law
Presidential appointees in the executive branch fill the top policymaking positions in government, and some 1000 of them require
U.S. Senate confirmation.
The main positive result of the Annapolis Convention was
a call for a larger meeting of the states, with a broader mission.
In 2003, the Supreme Court revisited the use of affirmative action by the University of Michigan and ruled that
a school's interest in diversity permitted the use of race as one factor in university admissions, as long as all applicants were judged individually on their merits.
A purchasing or contracting provision that reserves a certain percentage of funds for minority-owned contractors is best defined as
a set-aside
The Supreme Court's original jurisdiction extends to cases involving
ambassadors.
Real ID, a federally mandated program that imposes security standards for states to issue driver's licenses, is an example of
an unfunded mandate.
In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama proposed that the minimum wage
be raised to $10.10.
In the years after the Civil War, former slave states enacted ____________, attempting to restrict the freedoms of blacks.
black codes
A large, complex organization in which employees have specific job responsibilities and work within a hierarchy of authority is a(n)
bureaucracy
Supreme Court review is granted to a case
by the permission of any four justices.
The text suggests that in today's environment, minority identification on a law school application
can be seen as a positive benefit.
The vice president
can break tie votes in the Senate.
The ___________ gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states.
commerce clause
The text suggests that the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore provides evidence for the proposition that
conservative justices can be judicial activists
The airline industry claimed that the new Department of Transportation rules limiting passenger tarmac waits on a plane would
create longer delays
In recent years, morale of government employees has
declined, in part because of congressional budget actions.
Federal law that _____________ was struck down by the 2013 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor.
denied federal benefits to same-sex couples
The Great Depression represented a shift away from __________ and toward __________.
dual federalism; cooperative federalism
A constitutional clause that allows for a broad interpretation of implied powers is known as a(n) __________ clause
elastic
An important issue on which Vice President Joe Biden influenced President Obama in a positive direction was
embracing marriage equality.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 established the right to nondiscrimination in public accommodations and __________________.
employment opportunity
The vast majority of recent preemptions have focused on
environmental protection and homeland security.
If universities increase funding for women's sports so that they receive comparable funding to men's, that is an example of
equality of outcome
Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court
failed to revisit the Plessy-era separate-but-equal doctrine
Supreme Court oral arguments are typically conducted
from October through April
A power not specifically mentioned in the Constitution but necessary if another specific grant of power is to be carried out is called a(n) _________ power.
implied
The Americans with Disabilities Act
includes deliberately vague language as to what constitutes a disability.
The CIA is a good example of a federal
independent agency
An organized group that seeks to influence government policy is called a(n)
interest group.
A president's reelection to a second term
is typically due to fundamentals, such as state of the economy and whether the country is at war.
The most important obstacle to the adoption of the Constitution by the states was
it did not contain a bill of rights.
One of the weaknesses of the procedural model of democracy is that
it permits policies that violate standards of substantive democracy.
A president can appoint about three thousand people to jobs in their administration, which represents __________ of all executive branch employees.
less than 1 percent
An American, who supports the creation of election districts that are likely to vote for minority candidates for public office and wants more restrictions on business owners' hiring decisions, is likely to be a
liberal.
One important reason the president needs to work hard to unify his party is the ____________, which has become much more pronounced recently.
loss of the moderate middle in Congress
Cohesive political parties with well-defined programs contribute to the
majoritarian model of democracy
The most powerful person in the Senate is the
majority leader
Meetings in which legislation is debated and amended are called _________ sessions.
markup
The civil service was created after President Garfield was assassinated by a(n)
mentally unbalanced job seeker.
The text of the Constitution deals with slavery by
not mentioning it directly.
The phrase "divided government" refers to
one party controlling the presidency and another controlling Congress
In 2011, the state of Ohio approved an initiative to
overturn a law that had weakened unions
The idea that the courts are a policymaking branch of government and that the individual values and interests of judges should reflect the different values and interests of the population at large is most consistent with
pluralist democracy
A citizen, interest group member, or public official who champions a particular policy idea is called a
policy entrepreneur
According to the ____________ view of democracy, anti-gay marriage laws are democratic.
procedural
The chief goal of the drafters of the Articles of Confederation was to
protect states' rights.
The minority counterpart to a committee chairperson is called a
ranking minority member.
A whip is a member of the legislature who _____________.
rounds up votes for legislation
In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court
ruled that prior restraint almost always places an unacceptable burden on a free press
Federal appellate courts review and can overturn
rulings made and procedures followed by the lower federal courts and administrative agencies.
The larger governmental departments tend to focus on the nation's
security
The so-called "supercommittee" created in 2011 to issue recommendations for reducing the deficit, which included members from both the House and Senate, is an example of a(n)
select committee.
Agreement among substantive theorists breaks down when the discussion moves from civil rights to
social rights and economic rights.
President Lyndon Johnson considered civil rights legislation
something that the legislature should work on, and not the president
The House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are examples of
standing committees.
The judicial principle of tending to honor precedents in similar cases is known as__________
stare decisis
One significant difficulty with the initial No Child Left Behind law was that
states were allowed to set their own standards for what constituted acceptable student performance.
Suppose a majority of Congress passes a law to permit organized prayer in public schools and the Supreme Court declares that the Constitution forbids this rule; this would be an example of
substantive democracy.
The Bill of Rights is at the core of our
substantive theories of democracy.
In Griswold v. Connecticut , the Court struck down a state law
that made the use of birth control devices a crime.
The 113th Congress is considered by some to be ___________, compared to the general population.
the most diverse in history
The ancient Greeks classified governments as autocracies, oligarchies, or democracies based on
the number of citizens involved in governing.
The Supreme Court decision United States v. Leon established the good faith exception which allowed
the state to introduce evidence at trial if that evidence was seized on the basis of a mistakenly issued search warrant.
It takes a _________ vote of Congress to overturn a presidential veto.
two-thirds
The concept that everyone in a democracy should participate in governmental decision making is
universal participation
Through 2013, Barack Obama
vetoed two bills.
According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, the power of judicial review
was an essential barrier to legislative oppression