POLSC Exam #2
Sampling Error
+/- 3% Margin of error
Political Participation
- Conventional - Political Protest (Civil Disobedience) - Unconventional
Pentagon Papers (New York Times v. U.S.
- Daniel Elsburg leaked classified vietnam papers - supreme court -could not supress papers
Texas v. Johnson (1989)
- Flag burning - Have right to burn the flag
Free Speech and Fair trial
1. Commercial speech - advertisement 2. Regulation of air waves
Measuring Public Opinion
1. Elections 2. Polling
Libel & Slander
1. Libel - Published defemation - False statements 2. Slander - Spoken defemation
Agents of Socialization
1. Mass media 2. Television 3. Influence on people 4. Schools 5. Religion 6. Peer groups
Freedom of Religion
1st Amendment
Lemon Test
3 Prong test 1. Secular 2. Can't favor a religion 3. can't create bureaucratic relationship
Defendants Rights
4th Amendment - Search and seizure
Bakke
Bakke decision, formally Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, ruling in which, on June 28, 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court declared affirmative action constitutional but invalidated the use of racial quotas.
Graying of America
Change of the poplation
Ideology
Coherent system of beliefs
Religious Establishment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
Miranda v. Arizona
Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them.
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life.
Franklin Roosevelt
First press conferences
Civil Rights
Guarantees for equal treatment
Heller (2008) v. D.C.
Guarantees individual right to bear arms
Political Information
Low levels of political knowledge Lack of cultural literacy
Obscenity
Not protected by 1st amendment
Gallop
Polling Agency
Political socialization
Process of acquiring beliefs and customs over time
2nd Amendment
Right to bear arms
Freedom of Expression
Still 1st amendment
Brandenberg v. Ohio
The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action.[1] Specifically, it struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence.
Fourteenth Amendment
The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War.
Abortion Right Griswold v. Coneticut (1965)
The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices.
Freedom of Aseembly
U.S. Nazi Party v. Illinois
8th Amendment - cruel and unusual punishment
United States Bill of Rights (ratified December 15, 1791) prohibiting the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments, including torture.
1919
Women's right to vote
Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)
a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided 8-1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp, and declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional.
United States v. O'Brien
a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that a criminal prohibition against burning a draft card did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.
New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)
a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established the actual malice standard, which has to be met before press reports about public officials can be considered to be defamation and libel;[2]
Near v. Minnesota (1931)
a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence.
Roth v. U.S.
a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court which redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment.
Establishment Clause
a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation respecting an establishment of religion.
Hernandez v. Texas
decided that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Miller v. California
decision by the United States Supreme Court wherein the court redefined its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." It is now referred to as the Three-prong standard or the Miller test.
Defense of Marriage Act
defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states.
1924 Indian Citizenship Act
granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution defined as citizens any person born in the U.S., the amendment had been interpreted to restrict the citizenship rights of most Native people. The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. It was enacted partially in recognition of the thousands of Indians who served in the armed forces during World War I.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010)
is a U.S. constitutional law case dealing with the regulation of campaign spending by organizations. The United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations.
Bowers v. Hardwick
is a United States Supreme Court decision, overturned in 2003, that upheld, in a 5-4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to homosexuals.
Free Exercise Clause
is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation respecting an establishment of religion.
5th Amendment - "Self- Incrimination"
is part of the Bill of Rights and protects a person against being compelled to be a witness against himself or herself in a criminal case. "Pleading the Fifth" is a colloquial term for invoking the privilege that allows a witness to decline to answer questions that might incriminate him or her, without penalty or it counting against him or her.
Affirmative action
is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer from discrimination within a culture.
Buckley v. Valajo
legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 30, 1976, struck down provisions of the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)—as amended in 1974—that had imposed limits on various types of expenditures by or on behalf of candidates for federal office.
6th Amendment - right to council (lawyer)
means a defendant has a right to have the assistance of counsel (i.e., lawyers), and if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal expenses.
Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," may not be used in state law criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well, as had previously been the law, as in federal criminal law prosecutions in federal courts.
Greg v. Georgia
reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg.
Campaign Financing
refers to all funds raised in order to promote candidates, political parties, or policies in elections, referendums, initiatives, party activities, and party organizations.
Engel v. Vitale (1962)
ruled it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools.
Symbolic speech (1964)
speech is seen as a representation of ones beliefs or messages in the form of nonverbal communication. This type of presentation can be found in venues of political activity in the form of silent rallies, marches, the wearing of apparel such as pins and armbands, and the exhibition as well as destruction of nationally-recognized items such as the practice of flag-burning.
Plyler v. Doe
struck down a state statute denying funding for education to unauthorized immigrant children and simultaneously struck down a municipal school district's attempt to charge unauthorized immigrants an annual $1,000 tuition fee for each undocumented immigrant student to compensate for the lost state funding.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education.
Dred Scott v. Stanford
the Court held that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[2][3] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States
Dennis v. U.S.
the Court ruled that Dennis did not have the right under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to exercise free speech, publication and assembly, if the exercise involved the creation of a plot to overthrow the government.
Gideon v. Wainright (1963)
the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys. The case extended the right to counsel
13th Amendment
the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
Casey v. Planned Parenthood
the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state statutory provisions regarding abortion were challenged. The Court's plurality opinion upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion while altering the standard for analyzing restrictions on that right
Miller test
three parts: 1. Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, 2. Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[3] specifically defined by applicable state law, 3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955—when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
Jim Crow Laws
were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.
