AMERICAN GOVERNMENT POWER & PURPOSE-CHAPTER 5

Constituency

The District making up the area from which an official is elected.

Civil rights rights regulate...

who can participate in the political process and civil society and how they can participate (who can vote, who can serve in office, who can serve on juries, etc.)

-rules that govern collective decision-making process and outcomes

civil rights impact on majorities...

curb the power of majorities to exclude or harm individuals on the basis of factors such as race, gender, or ethnic background

transformation of civil rights

-inclusion of women, african americans, etc.

-this expansion of civil rights required collective action from the excluded groups

at the time of the constitution, how many states prohibited slavery

only 5 out of the 13

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Supreme Court case that decided US Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and slaves, as private property, could not be taken away without due process - basically slaves would remain slaves in non-slave states and slaves could not sue because they were not citizens

13th Amendment (1865)

Abolition of slavery w/o compensation for slave-owners

14th Amendment

Declares that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens and are guaranteed equal protection of the laws

15th amendment

Citizens cannot be denied the right to vote because of race, color , or precious condition of servitude

Equal Protection Clause

14th amendment clause that prohibits states from denying equal protection under the law, and has been used to combat discrimination

-transformed ciliv rights because it created a foundation for asserticing equal civil rights for all persons

3 features of civil rights

who, what, how much (who has a right and who does not? a right to what? and how much is any individual able to exercise that right?)

nationalization act of 1790

rules for granting citizenahip

Must live 5 continuous years within US(including no travel elsewhere), then given practical test to enter since immigration was initially unrestricted.

Feds didn't approve but knew we needed workers. Said they shouldn't have natural rights and must work harder to gain them.

did you always have to be a citizen to vote?

no, previous to the beginning of the nineteenth century, many states and cities allowed noncitizens to vote

-influx of immigrants changed that

Page Act of 1875

Federal act that closed the immigration doors to a variety of people Congress presumed "undesirable," including Chinese women they feared would enter prostitution.

Right of Habeas Corpus

civil right stating that no person should be held in custody unless charged with a crime

Due Process

5th ammendment statement fair treatment through the normal judicial system, especially as a citizen's entitlement.

Property qualifications to vote

in order to vote you had to own land or pay a certain amount of rent for a year.

-eliminated in 1850

poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses

• The Fifteenth Amendment gave African American males the right to vote

• Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses took that right away

• A poll tax was a tax for voting - newly freed slaves could not afford to pay the tax

• A literacy test is a difficult test to pass in order to vote - newly freed slaves were often illiterate and could not pass the test

• A grandfather clause stated that if a man's ancestor voted before the Civil War, he could vote and not pay the tax - the ancestors of newly freed slaves could not vote and so newly freed slaves, unlike poor whites, had to pay the poll tax and pass the literacy test in order to vote

Voting Rights Act of 1965

a law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African-American suffrage

Seneca Falls Convention

(1848) the first national women's rights convention at which the Declaration of Sentiments was written asserting that women were entitled to equal rights

NWSA (National Women's Suffrage Association)

Founded by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Created in 1869 when the women's rights movement split into 2 separate groups over the issue of suffrage for African American men

Gave priority to securing women the right to vote

Proposed many reforms on things such as marriage and divorce

19th Amendment

Gave women the right to vote

white primary

the practice of keeping blacks from voting in the southern states' primaries through arbitrary use of registration requirements and intimidation

Shelby County v. Holder

Ruled the preclearance portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional for now

States and localities do not need federal approval to change voting laws.

Preclearance

mandated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the prior approval by the Justice Department of changes to or new election laws by certain States

civil rights act of 1875

law that banned discrimination in public facilities and transportation

Plessy v. Ferguson

a 1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized state ordered segregation so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal

(ruled that the 14th ammendment equal protecyion laws was not violated by racial discrimination as long as it was equal)

Brown v. Board of Education

1954 - The Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, declared that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.

-most states refused to cooperate until they were sued

de jure segregation

Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies.

de facto segregation

Racial segregation that occurs in schools, not as a result of the law, but as a result of patterns of residential settlement

-brown v board did not affect this (brown also did not affect discrimination in employment, voting, other areas of social and economic activity)

Massive Resistance

Southern movement resisting school integration after Brown v. Board of Education.

Little Rock High School

mob assembled protesting integration

Was the site of forced desegregation in 1957 when the governor of Alabama wouldn't allow the "Little Rock nine" access to the school. President Eisenhower then mobilized the 101st airborne division to force the school to admit the students.

pupil placement laws

laws enabled local officials to assign individual students to schools on basis of scholastic aptitude and social behavior. Devices for maintaining segregation

Civil Rights Act of 1964

This act made racial, religious, and sex discrimination by employers illegal and gave the government the power to enforce all laws governing civil rights, including desegregation of schools and public places. could withhold grants, loans, etc.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

In this 1971 Supreme Court Decision, the court ruled that, even though the schools in the district worked out to be only minimally integrated because of the full black or white neighborhood, the schools had to be intergraded based on the percentage of blacks in the whole district, meaning that blacks had to be bussed over great distances to integrate schools that naturally sat in all white neighborhoods. This cause a great push-back from middle America, who saw the end of the neighborhood school

Milliken v. Bradley

1974 Supreme Court case that ruled that desegregation plans could not require students to move across school district lines, which was a victory for anti-busing proponents who felt that Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was an injustice

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

forbids discrimination in all areas of the employment relationship

Equal Rights Amendment

constitutional amendment passed by Congress but never ratified that would have banned discrimination on the basis of gender

Intermediate Scrutiny

a test used by the Supreme Court in gender discrimination cases that places the burden of proof partially on the government and partially on the challengers to show that the law in question is unconstitutional

affirmitive action

Programs designed to ensure that women, minorities, and other traditionally disadvantaged groups have full and equal oppuritunities in imployment, education, and other areas of life.

Allan Bakke

White student who was denied admission to University of California medical school because slots were reserved for minority students--brought his case to the supreme court. (Reverse Discrimination)

-won his case but did not get affirmative action declared unconstitutional

Hopwood v. Texas

(1996) Supreme Court case in which 2 white students sued University of Texas School of Law because they were allegedly denied admission because of the school's affirmative action program; challenged the Bakke decision; use of race even as a means of achieving diversity on college campuses "undercuts the 14th Amendment"