American Government Mid-Term
Which of the following statements about the income tax is most accurate?
Although the income tax is currently one of the most important sources of government revenue, it had not yet developed during British rule over the colonies in the eighteenth century.
Which of the following statements about the death penalty is most accurate?
America is the only Western nation that still executes criminals
________ compels state governments to obey costly federal regulations, but does not reimburse those costs.
An unfunded mandate
Brutus and the Federal Farmer were two pseudonyms used by the ________.
Antifederalists
The Bill of Rights was adopted because the
Antifederalists demanded it as the price of ratification of the Constitution.
In 1870, Congress passed a law forbidding ________ from becoming U.S. citizens.
Chinese
________ are areas of personal freedom with which governments are constrained from interfering.
Civil libertes
Bicameralism is a constitutional principle that means the division of
Congress into two chambers.
The issue of representation, which threatened to cause the Philadelphia convention to fail, was resolved by the ________.
Connecticut Compromise
Under the Articles of Confederation, the
Continental Congress had no power to lay taxes.
________ is evidenced when national officials fund a project that is actually implemented by state governments.
Cooperative federalism
Which of the following is true of the Annapolis Convention?
Delegates from five states attended.
Which of the following best summarizes the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)?
Racially segregated schools can never be equal
Which of the following statements about grand juries is most accurate?
The Fifth Amendment provision for a grand jury has never been incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to state criminal prosecutions.
Which of the following possesses the sole power to create revenue bills?
The House of Representatives
A federal grant to states to assist in the building of new public schools is an example of a ________ grant.
categorical
In response to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), southern officials
centralized school boards to prevent local districts from obeying the Supreme Court.
The privileges and immunities clause of Article IV is also referred to as the ________ clause.
comity
The structure of American federalism
contributed to the longevity of the U.S. government by allowing many divisive policy decisions throughout American history to be made by states.
Legally enforced segregation in public schools is a form of ________ discrimination.
de jure
In response to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Supreme Court
declared the act unconstitutional because it protected against acts of private discrimination rather than state discrimination.
The electoral college is
designed to select the president of the United States
The Three-Fifths Compromise
determined that three out of every five slaves would be counted for purposes of representation and taxation.
A grand jury
determines whether there is enough evidence to justify a trial.
In order to win concessions from large states at the Philadelphia convention, representatives from smaller states such as Delaware threatened to
form alliances with foreign nations.
Freedom of speech and of the press have a special place in the American system because
free and open debate is an essential mechanism for determining the quality and validity of competing ideas.
The rights to assembly and petition are guaranteed by the same amendment that guarantees ________.
free speech
The ________ clause in the U.S. Constitution was central in the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
full faith and credit
The fact that state governments are required to enforce restraining orders placed on stalkers and batterers in other states is a result of the
full faith and credit clause of the Constitution.
The ________ and the ________ clauses of the U.S. Constitution involve the relationships between and among the various states.
full faith and credit; privileges and immunities
The process by which one unit of government yields a portion of its tax income to another unit of government according to an established formula is called
general revenue sharing.
What occurs when electoral districts are drawn so that one group or party is unfairly advantaged?
gerrymandering
Block grants are designed to
give the states considerable discretion in how money from the federal government should be spent.
The Articles of Confederation were concerned primarily with
limiting the powers of the central government.
The Seneca Falls Convention was significant because it
marked the starting point of the modern women's movement.
The writing of the Constitution demonstrates the
marriage of interests and principles.
Under the traditional system of American federalism, most of the fundamental governing in the United States was done by________.
state governments
Under the Articles of Confederation, it was left to the ________ to execute laws passed by the Continental Congress.
states
The judicial doctrine that places a heavy burden of proof on the government when it seeks to regulate speech is called ________.
strict scrutiny
A major reason that the slogan "states' rights" became tarnished in the 1950s and 1960s was that it had been used by
support opponents of the civil rights movement to support Jim Crow laws
The Stamp Act was a
tax on commerce.
The rights of disabled individuals to access public businesses is guaranteed by
the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
In Snyder v. Phelps (2011), the Supreme Court ruled that
the First Amendment protects free speech in a public place against emotional distress lawsuits.
After the Civil War, which amendments to the U.S. Constitution offered African Americans the most hope for achieving full citizenship rights?
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments
After World War II, which government institution first began drawing attention to the problem of racism in America?
the White House
The Lemon test involves what part of the Constitution?
the establishment clause
Members of Congress have frequently proposed a constitutional amendment to make flag burning a crime because
the only way to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling that flag burning is protected speech is through a constitutional amendment.
When New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed in 2005, it illustrated that
the press has no constitutional right to withhold information in court.
The constitutional idea of states' rights was strongest during which historical period?
the years immediately preceding the Civil War
Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), only ________ percent of black children in the Deep South attended school with white children.
1 percent
The Articles of Confederation were adopted in ________.
1781
In what year was freedom of speech extended to protect against the acts of state governments?
1925
The Supreme Court began to change its position on racial discrimination in the ________.
1930s
In ________, the Supreme Court reinterpreted the commerce clause, changing it from a check on national power to a source of national power.
1937
In ________, the Supreme Court permitted busing children as a way of bringing about desegregation of schools.
1971
There are ________ amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
27
In 1965, in the seven states of the Old Confederacy covered by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), approximately ________ percent of the eligible black residents were registered to vote, compared with approximately ________ percent of the white residents.
30; 75
________ prevents people from being tried twice for the same crime.
Double jeopardy
How was political power in the Continental Congress divided under the Articles of Confederation?
Each state had an equal vote
Which government institution would most likely handle a complaint about a case of workplace discrimination?
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The right to remain silent is guaranteed by the ________ Amendment.
Fifth
The first provision of the Bill of Rights to be "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment as a limitation on state power was the
Fifth Amendment's prohibition on states from taking private property for a public use without just compensation.
The ________ Amendment is the only amendment in the Bill of Rights that explicitly addresses itself to the national government.
First
The era of dual federalism was from the ________ until ________.
Founding; the New Deal
The constitutional basis for the nationalization of the Bill of Rights is the ________ Amendment.
Fourteenth
"Commerce among the several states" was first defined in
Gibbons v. Ogden.
According to the Supreme Court, which of the following is true about high school students in public schools?
High school students have conditionally protected speech.
The exclusionary rule was applied to all levels of government by the Supreme Court in which case?
Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
The requirement that a person under arrest be informed of his or her right to remain silent is known as the ________ rule.
Miranda
Women were guaranteed the right to vote with the passage of the ________ Amendment in 1920.
Nineteenth
Which state did not send delegates to the convention at Philadelphia?
Rhode Island
Who was the first president to promote New Federalism?
Richard Nixon
Advocates of limiting the powers of the national government justify their position by pointing to the ________ of the U.S. Constitution.
Tenth Amendment
Which of the following best describes the Supreme Court's first ruling on the nationalization of the Bill of Rights in 1833?
The Bill of Rights limits the national government but not state governments
The events that led to the Revolutionary War were triggered by which of the following?
The British raised revenue by increasing the tax rate of the colonies.
Which of the following is the best example of a unitary system of government?
The federal government sets detailed educational guidelines that all local governments must implement.
Which of the following statements best describes the effect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on voter registration in southern states?
The gap between the percentage of whites registering to vote and the percentage of African Americans registering to vote declined significantly after passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Which of the following statements about the judicial standard of strict scrutiny is NOT accurate?
The government must show that the law has a "rational basis" in evidence for helping a sufficiently large number of people.
What does the term Jim Crow mean?
The governor of Arkansas mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to block the enforcement of a federal court order to integrate Little Rock Central High School.
Why did President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploy federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957?
The governor of Arkansas mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to block the enforcement of a federal court order to integrate Little Rock Central High School.
What was one effect of dual federalism during the early Republic?
The national government was spared the task of making difficult policy decisions, such as the regulation of slavery, because the states did it themselves for the most part.
Which of the following statements best describes the number of peaceful civil rights demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s?
The number of demonstrations grew in the early 1960s and peaked in 1965.
________ argued that there was a "wall of separation" between church and state.
Thomas Jefferson
In E.E.O.C. v. Abercrombie and Fitch Stores (2015), the Supreme Court ruled that
Title VII of the U.S. Code prevents retail stores from refusing to hire Muslim women who wear head scarves in violation of company dress policies.
Which nation has the highest rate of incarceration?
United States
The essential dilemma of a limited government raised by the ratification debates is that
a government too weak to do harm also cannot do good.
What was the Seneca Falls Convention?
a meeting in upstate New York during the mid-nineteenth century regarding women's rights
Montesquieu called ________ the principle of giving each branch of government its own constituency.
a mixed regime
The Thirteenth Amendment
abolished slavery.
The power of judicial review was
asserted by the court in the case Marbury v. Madison.
One step taken toward the desegregation of public schools was
busing children from poor urban school districts to wealthier suburban ones.
Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was important because it produced rules that must be used
by the police before questioning an arrested criminal suspect.
The purpose of the Annapolis Convention was to
discuss revamping the Articles of Confederation
One argument for a strong federal government is that it promotes ________ across states.
equality
The so-called wall of separation between church and state is best found in which clause of the Constitution?
establishment
The three branches of government created by the Constitution are
executive, legislative, and judicial.
States like Delaware, Connecticut, and New York opposed the Virginia Plan because they
feared that large states would dominate the new government if representation were to be determined by population, as stipulated by the Virginia Plan.
The Fourteenth Amendment
forced state governments to abide by almost every provision in the Bill of Rights, but the process took more than 100 years.
The Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) was significant because it
guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry in all states and required states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions
The most common method of passing an amendment to the Constitution is passage
in both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote, followed by a majority vote in three-fourths of the state legislature.
Federalism is best defined as a system of government
in which power is divided between a national government and lower-level government.
The Bill of Rights
includes the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution
The most important political value for the framers of the Constitution was ________.
individual liberty
As of 2016, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a policy that
instructs immigration officials to take no action to deport law-abiding individuals who entered the United States illegally as children.
What level of scrutiny do federal judges apply to cases involving gender discrimination?
intermediate scrutiny
Alexander Hamilton opposed a bill of rights mainly because he believed that
it was unnecessary for a national government to possess only explicitly delegated powers.
During the Philadelphia convention, the New Jersey Plan was supported by ________.
less-populous states
The goal of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act was to
limit the costs associated with unfunded mandates by ensuring that Congress knows how much it is expecting of state and local governments and the private sector.
The purpose of the Tenth Amendment is to
limit the powers of the federal government by reserving certain powers to the states and to the people.
The Supreme Court justified its decision to strike down the use of white primaries in the South by claiming that
parties were "an agency of the State," and therefore any practice of discrimination against blacks was a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were laws
passed in the 1790s that made it a crime to say or publish anything that would defame the government of the United States.
"Marble cake federalism" is associated with the
pattern of intergovernmental cooperation that has blurred the lines between the states and the national governments.
In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that government support of religion is
permissible only if it is secular in purpose, neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and does not lead to excessive entanglement with religion.
A state government's authority to regulate the safety, health, and morals of its citizens is called the ________ power.
police
The Federalists believed that the most apparent source of tyranny was the ________.
popular majority
The principle of ________ gives the federal government the power to override any state or local law in one particular area of policy.
preemption
The framers employed the separation of powers and federalism in order to
prevent the new government from abusing its power.
The decision to give the national government control over interstate commerce and finance was motivated primarily by the framers' desire to
promote economic development and protect property from radical state legislatures.
According to the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, one of the purposes of government is to
promote justice and secure the "blessings of liberty"
During the era of dual federalism, the primary goal of the federal government's domestic policies was to
promote the development of commercial activity between and among the states.
According to historian Charles Beard, the framers of the Constitution were mostly concerned with
promoting their own economic interests.
The DREAM Act would
provide a route to permanent residency via military service or college attendance for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as young children.
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court ruled that
quotas and separate admissions standards for minorities were unconstitutional, but affirmative action could be used.
Unfunded mandates are unpopular among those who want to
reduce the power of the federal government
The best example of a concurrent power under the U.S. Constitution is the power to
regulate commercial activity
An example of ________ federalism is when federal officials establish environmental standards that every state must follow.
regulated
On the subject of representation, Anti-federalists wanted
representative bodies that resembled those represented to the highest degree.
The delegates at the Philadelphia convention turned down the idea of including a list of citizens' rights in the Constitution because they believed that
since the federal government was already limited to its expressed powers, further protection of citizens was not needed.
The "peculiar institution" was a phrase used by southerners to describe
slavery.
Attempts by Congress to regulate child labor and factory conditions in local workplaces were struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in the late nineteenth century because regulating local workplaces was
was beyond the scope of interstate commerce at the time and was therefore perceived to be an unconstitutional exercise of power by the federal government.
Before 1924, Native Americans
were considered to be foreigners because their tribes were regarded as separate nations.
