Exam 2 (POLS 2311)
Madison, who recognized that people act most forcefully when they have a stake in the outcome, believed tyranny could best be avoided by
empowering every faction to look out for its own interests
The difficulty with the doctrine for obscenity policy as set forth by the Supreme Court in the 1957 case Roth v. United States is
every key word in the passage is ambiguous and subject to lenient or restrictive interpretations
A small but persistent abolitionist movement before and into the Civil War forced the nation to do
face the discrepancy between its creed, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and the enslavement of 10 percent of its population
The First Reconstruction Act of 1867 disbanded the governments of the southern states and replaced them with
five military districts headed by generals and administered by more than twenty thousand troops
Under the Articles of Confederation each state was free to conduct its own international trade policy, which meant
foreign governments and merchants could exploit competition among the states to negotiate profitable trade agreements
Over the past century, determination of national civil liberties policy has shifted
from nearly the exclusive jurisdiction of states and communities to Washington, D.C.
Affirmative action refers to a policy that
gives special consideration to minorities in their selection for employment and education where employers or government agencies have practiced discrimination in the past
For most states, freeing slaves and granting slaves full-fledged citizenship were two different things and
granting slaves full-fledged citizenship was considered radical even by abolitionists
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provides in part that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law," nor
"deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The so-called "elastic clause" of Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution provides that Congress can "make all Laws which shall be . . .
. . . necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" the foregoing enumerated powers
The poll tax, literacy tests, and grandfather clause were all mechanisms by
African Americans were deprived of the right to vote
In 1787, _______________ convened an abolitionist society meeting in his home and invited delegates to the Constitutional Convention to attend.
Benjamin Franklin
Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment reaffirms the constitutional prescription of apportioning seats in the House or Representatives according to a state's population but makes the following exception
if black males are not allowed to vote in federal and state elections, the number of allocated seats would be reduced proportionally
The constitutional right to privacy is to be found in the Constitution's penumbras, which are best defined as
implicit zones of protected privacy rights on which the existence of explicit rights depend
After Brown v. Board of Topeka was decided in 1954, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, was integrated in 1957 with the help of
U.S. Army troops sent by President Dwight Eisenhower
The purpose of Reconstruction can best be characterized as
a partisan effort by the Republican Party
American federalism is
a two-tiered system comprised of the national government and the state governments
Between 1882 and 1950, 4,729 lynchings were reported in the United States. African Americans were the victims of these lynchings in
about three-quarters of the cases
What has been a problem for the Supreme Court and law enforcement when it comes to obscenity
adequately defining obscenity and drafting objective standards that enable judges and police to distinguish the merely pornographic or sexually explicit from the truly obscene
The second sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which includes both the "equal protection clause" and the "due process clause," means in part
all persons enjoy the same civil liberties and rights, which the states cannot deny without following reasonable, legally established procedures applied equally to everyone
It is evident that Reconstruction was driven by narrow partisan purposes for which reason
all the freed slaves got from Congress was the ballot
The commitment of northern Republicans to Reconstruction in the South waned after
an economic recession led to many Republican losses in the 1874 election
The 1970 extension of the Voting Rights Act required what with regard to ballots
ballots be available in Spanish where at least 5 percent of the population is Hispanic
In 1846, David Wilmot, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, sought to ban slavery in the newly acquired territories for which reason
because the presence of slaves as free labor depressed wages for white workers
Shortly after the Civil War, southern legislators enacted laws to keep former slaves from voting. These laws were called
black codes
As a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, what happened
both voter registration and election to office increased dramatically for African Americans
Madison and Jefferson both subscribed to the view that the First Amendment erects a "wall of separation between church and state"
but this is only one interpretation, as separation is not mentioned in the Constitution itself
What had occurred by June of 1861
eleven states had left the Union and formed a new confederation-style government
Although the two concepts are often used interchangeably, the difference between civil liberties and civil rights is
civil liberties are the Constitution's protections "from" government power; civil rights are the Constitution's protections provided "by" government power
The effort to secure civil rights for African American rested on
configuring politics to allow society's competing interests to check one another
The difference between de facto segregation and de jure segregation is
de facto segregation is not mandated by law; de jure segregation is mandated by law
Although in Gitlow v. New York the Supreme Court established the Fourteenth Amendment's jurisdiction over the states when it came to free speech, what was also true
defendant Gitlow still had his state-level conviction upheld and went to prison
In 1833, in the case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court reasoned that the whole thrust of the Bill of Rights was
directed exclusively at restraining federal power
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 forced law enforcement authorities
in both the North and the South to act as slaveholders' agents in seizing and returning their "property"
What is true about the 1913 ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which mandated the popular elections of senators
it came about because of public pressure amid persistent, widespread, and well-founded charges that senators were buying seats by bribing state legislators
What is true about the Constitution, as it emerged from the Philadelphia convention in 1787
it did not seriously address civil liberties
How has Madison's vision of the national government as the ultimate guarantor of individual rights fared throughout the years
it has largely been realized
In the McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), John Marshall determined the supremacy clause did
it implicitly exempted the federal government from state taxes
The Johnson administration's high-profile sponsorship of civil rights laws set the stage for civil rights to do
it led to a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the 1965−1966 term
What is true about the religious freedom provision of the First Amendment
it prohibits Congress from passing any legislation "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
What best describes the language of the Bill of Rights
it seems generally clear and unequivocal but sometimes is ambiguous
The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is most notable for
it struck down the separate but equal doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson
What is true about the Supreme Court's 1973 opinion in Roe v. Wade
it was the first time the Court had ruled on any issue regarding the decision of an individual to bear a child
Incorporation of provisions of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment occurred through
judicial interpretation
"Jim Crow laws" were
laws adopted throughout the South to disenfranchise black citizens and to institutionalize segregation
The Bill of Rights was designed to
limit the capacity of government to impose conformity costs on those individuals and minorities whose views differ from the majority
In a famous decision by Judge F. Dillon, "Dillon's Rule" ,made it clear that
local government are mere creatures of the state
A confederation is a form of government best describes as
lower-level government possess primary authority
Dual federalism leaves the states and the national government to preside over
mutually exclusive spheres of sovereignty
When was the first time in American history that the president and a majority in both the House and the Senate were opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories
not until President Rutherford B. Hayes was elected in a landslide
The Supreme Court has held all of the following to be expression protected by the First Amendment except
obscenity
In part, the incorporation decisions handed down by the Supreme Court since 1925 have done
offered new opportunities for litigation and have generated the dramatic growth in the civil liberties docket of the Supreme Court
Early feminists called themselves "suffragists" because
one important issue for them was campaigning for the vote
In the five year period from 1865 to 1870, slaves were emancipated, granted citizenship, and guaranteed the right to vote. However, what was also true
only a handful of Union states gave African American citizens equal access to the ballot box
The 1965 Voting Rights Act authorized the Justice Department, under certain circumstances, to send federal officers into communities to directly register voters. This policy is
perfectly consistent with Madison's proposed national veto over objectionable state laws
The Supreme Court first began selectively incorporating into the Fourteenth Amendment those provisions of the Bill of Rights dealing with
personal freedoms such as those protected in the Fifth Amendment
Wilmot, Lincoln, and Johnson all assembled coalitions of self-interested constituencies behind
policies that have rapidly evolved to secure the civil rights of all Americans
Growing numbers and a concentrated residential pattern for Hispanics means
politicians will find they can ill afford to ignore this constituency
Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery bus boycott in December of 1955
refusing to surrender her seat to a white person and move to the back of a city bus as required by law
Advances in national civil liberties policy have frequently involved:
reigning in majorities that assert their prerogatives over the objections of individuals and groups who did not wish to conform to prevailing social norms and rules
_____ occurs when national and state government jointly supply services to the citizenry.
shared federalism
In 1919, Charles Schenck's advocacy of resistance to the draft led to the Supreme Court's creation of
the clear and present danger test
In order to justify the New Deal's unprecedented intervention in the economy, the Roosevelt administration invoked
the commerce clause
The passage of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which standardized state driver's licenses for interstate truckers, is an example of the federal government doing?
solving a coordination problem among the states.
Currently, the most accurate statement about the application of the Bill of Rights to the states is
some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights are still not applied to the states
From the 1920s through the 1940s, the Supreme Court incorporated into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment the First Amendment freedoms, which include
speech, press, and religion
In the nineteenth century and the Senate had both the motive and the means to defend state prerogatives against national encroachment because of
state legislatures picked the senators and each state had equal representatives in the Senate regardless of population
The post-Civil War passage of the Fourteenth Amendment allowed later courts to use its due process clause to do?
strike down state laws that violated various explicit and implicit federal rights
In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court ruled state antisodomy laws were unconstitutional because
such laws violated individuals' Constitutional privacy rights
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty are both examples of
sudden bursts of national policymaking in which the federal government assumed jurisdiction over public policy once reserved to the states
In Federalist No. 84 Alexander Hamilton poses the question, "Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" He was expressing what concern
that a list of rights in the Constitution might imply the federal government had the authority to restrict the freedoms not expressly protected
Congress passed a law that ended the importation of slaves in 1807 for which reason
the Constitution's prohibition against the federal government's regulation of the slave trade was about to expire
The first provision of the Bill of Rights to be incorporated by the Supreme Court into the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause was
the Fifth Amendment's ban on taking private property without just compensation
The Fourteenth Amendment, as an integral part of Reconstruction, was intended to serve two constituencies--first, African Americans in the South, and second
the Republican majority in Washington, D.C.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spearheaded demonstrations throughout the South through his organization, which was called
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
After Lincoln was elected, for the first time in American history
the Supreme Court and a majority of both houses of Congress were aligned against the president over slavery
In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the right of the national government to create a bank based on
the authority to create the bank was expressly enumerated to its governmental power in the Constitution
In the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases, the Supreme Court stated that ____________________ would "fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress."
the broad application of the Fourteenth Amendment to state policy
The Constitution opened the door to nationalization by granting the federal government ultimate power to determine within certain bounds
the extent of its authority over the states
A unified national citizenship is provided for in the Constitution
the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment
What is a compelling strategic reasons for a group to prefer national policy to state policy
the national arena may be the only place in which it can help to prevail
In unitary government systems
the national government monopolizes constitutional authority
The original intent of the supremacy clause was to ensure
the national government would prevail over states when both governments were acting in a constitutionally correct manner
Between 1807 and 1819, slavery was a side- issue in politics only because
the northern and southern states carefully maintained regional balance in the Senate by equally matching slave states' and free states' entry into the Union
What was the rationale behind the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which matched Missouri's entry into the Union as a slave state with Maine's entry into the Union as a free state
the parties compromised so the balance in the Senate between free and slave states would be maintained
Although state officials may frequently complain about the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency,
the presence of national standards insulates environmental protection from cutthroat competition among the states
The white primary, which excluded African Americans from voting in the primary, effectively disenfranchised African Americans because
there were rules in place that prohibited anyone who had not voted in the primary from voting in the general election
As Madison points out in Federalist No. 10, since the states and the national government combine the citizenry's preferences into different groupings, the two levels of government do?
they may adopt different, even opposite, policies to address the same problem
What best describes scholars who argue that the Tenth Amendment -- which provides that the powers not taken by the national government belong to the states -- is little more than a truism
they point to the powerful combination of the supremacy clause and the elastic clause to support their argument
Although the Antifederalists lost their battle against ratification of the Constitution, what is true
they salvaged a major political concession in the Bill of Rights, which is their chief legacy to future generations of Americans
In the antebellum South, white majorities enlisted state authority to preserve slavery, aided by their agents in the Senate, who did which of the following, as Madison warned
they succeeded in frustrating national action
Federal hate crime protections concern
those provisions of the criminal code that make it illegal, or enhance penalties for, violence directed against individuals, property, or organizations solely because of the victim's race, gender, national origin, or sexual orientation
Whereas Madison viewed competing ambitions as performing a limited but vital service of neutralizing politicians who might be inclined to serve themselves more than their constituencies, the history of civil rights portrays these same vote-seeking politicians as
transforming moral justice into public policy
In a federal system, the constitution divides authority between
two or more distinct levels of government
The process of "incorporation" by the Supreme Court refers to
using the Fourteenth Amendment to make the Bill of Rights binding on state governments
The "criminal anarchy" for which Benjamin Gitlow was arrested and convicted was
violently resisting the draft
At first, the nationalization of civil liberties in the Bill of Rights
was not a popular idea and Madison's proposal to amend the Constitution to apply them directly to the states was defeated in Congress
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourth Amendment to allow for police searches and seizures of evidence without a warrant under all of the following circumstances, except for
when using a thermal imaging device to conduct a blanket sweep of neighborhoods to search for basement marijuana fields
When the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden that only Congress possessed the authority to regulate interstate commerce it did?
with McCulloch v. Maryland, it created a powerful precedent that allowed future national policy to develop free of the constraints of state prerogatives
An independent press plays an indispensable role in maintaining a representative democracy for
without reliable information about the performance of officeholders, citizens would be hard-pressed to monitor their agents, and politicians would find it difficult to communicate with their constituents