AP US Government Ultimate Review

Unit 1 - Foundations

1.1 - Ideals of Democracy

Q: Explain the democratic ideals that show up in the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution

  • Main ideal of democracy:

    Limited Government: Admitting the need for a government but wanting to keep its power limited

    • This idea was influenced by the Enlightenment

      • This movement influenced the Founding Fathers heavily

    • Sub categories of Limited Government ideals:

      1. Natural Rights: People are born with certain rights, which are given by their creator

        • This means that it can’t be taken away by a monarch

      2. State of Nature: Comes before government, where humans are truly free

        • Some philosophers thought that this wasn’t good because it creates chaos

          • As a result, government exists to keep your rights secure

      3. Popular Sovereignty/Social Contract: The power to govern exists in the people (Popular Sovereignty). To protect your natural rights, you give up some of that power to the government

        • The state is the servant of the people

        • If the government fails to uphold the social contract, it is your right to start a new government

      4. Republicanism: People elect leaders to represent them to create laws the serve the people’s interest

        • To prevent corruption, divide up the government into three branches

    • These 4 ideals make up the idea of limited government

  • Enlightenment influence on the Declaration of Independence:

    • “…By their creator with certain unalienable rights…Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

      • This highlights the ideal of Natural Rights

    • “Government are instituted among men… their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

      • This highlights the ideal of the Social Contract and Popular Sovereignty

  • Enlightenment influence on the Constitution:

    • Created a representative republic, where people voted for representatives who legislate on behalf of the people

    • Divided up the government into three branches, where each branch can check the power of another

      • This highlights the ideal of Republicanism

(Create Visual Graph that shows this)

1.2 - Types of Democracy

Q: Show how models of representative democracy are seen in the important institutions, policies, events, or debates in the US

  • 3 different models of democracy:

    • All of these show up in American Institutions:

      1. Participatory Democracy: Encourages broad participation in politics and civil society

        • Citizens vote on laws directly, not by the way of representatives

        • Founders thought it wasn’t practical to have everyone voting on laws, especially as the population grew and laws became more complex

        • Still shows up in local politics:

          1. Town hall meetings for everyone participate in local policy making

      2. Elite Democracy: Encourages limited participation, with a few well-educated individuals who are qualified to direct law-making on behalf of the people

        • Need to have specialists to help run the very complex country

        • Prevents the masses from making unwise policy choices

        • Many examples in our institutions today:

          1. The power to appoint judges, which doesn’t involve citizens

          2. The Electoral College, where a handful of electors elect the president

      3. Pluralist Democracy: Group-based activism by nongovernmental interests, working towards impacting political decision making

        • Interest Groups: Groups which form around a particular cause, like the NRA and NAACP

          • When citizens join interest groups, they can pool together resources to have a huge influence on representatives in Congress

        • A Pluralist Democracy can be described as a group-based since it’s not based on the elite of a few, nor is it based on single citizens casting their concerns

          • Rather, it’s the work of everyone in a group casting their concerns

          • Interest groups provide a louder voice to amplify concerns

        • States also symbolize a Pluralist Democracy, since they each represent the interests of their citizens

  • Tensions between types of democracy reflected in the Constitution:

    • Elite Model: Allows for elected representatives that legislate on behalf of the people

    • Pluralist Model: Various interests, such as the states, have to compromise to get laws passed

    • Participatory Model: The Separation of power between the federal and state government, where states can create laws as long as they don’t conflict with national laws

  • Tensions between types of democracy represented in the debate between Federalist 10 and Brutus 1:

    • Brutus 1 championed the broad participatory model, because they feared that a large central government could be tyrannical.

      • Wanted to keep a majority of the power with the states

    • Federalist 10 thought that the fear of tyranny wasn’t logical, as the population was so diverse that there would be too many factions competing against each other

      • This competitive environment would act as a shield for the union against tyranny

1.3 - Government Power and Individuals Rights

Q: Explain how Federalist and Anti-Federalists views on central government AND democracy are reflected in US Foundational Documents (Federalist 10 and Brutus 1)

  • Federalist 10 v. Brutus 1:

    • The main idea of this debate was majority rule versus minority rights

      • For instances, how could agricultural interests (the majority) not dominate industrial interest (the minority)?

    • The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists debated this during the ratification of the constitution

      • Federalists: Arguing for more centralized power in the federal government

        • If the constitution was ratified, we would get more centralized power in the federal government

      • Anti-Federalists: Arguing against ratification for the constitution, because the current powers invested in the states under the articles of confederation was fine

        • Both sides published essays to argue for their perspective, becoming the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers

  • Federalist 10:

    • Mainly arguing about the “mischief of factions”

      • Factions: a group that believes their interests/opinions are more important than other interests/opinions

    • If the majority always prevailed, it would be impossible to represent the minority

      • However, too many protections to the minority would prevent the common good from prevailing

    • The solution: creating a republican style government, with so many factions that would have to debate and compromise in order to get any laws passed

      • This upholds the majority rule and the minority rights

  • Brutus 1:

    • Stated that history hadn’t seen a republican style government with a large population and a large land mass like the United States

    • The necessary and proper clause and the supremacy clause in the Constitution would give the central government too much power

      • As a result, the interests of states no longer can exist

      • To maintain liberty, the Constitution’s centralized power should not be ratified

1.4 - Challenges of the Articles of Confederation

Q: Explain the relationship between key provisions of the Articles of Confederation and the debate over granting the federal government greater power formerly reserved to the states

  • Articles of Confederation:

    • The 13 states needed to form a government when they declared independence in 1776

    • A central government would bound everyone together to preform international tasks

      • States held most of the power under the articles of Confederations, with a weak central government

  • Weakness of the Articles:

    1. Federal government only had one branch

      • One Congress

      • No executive or judicial branch

    2. All 13 states had to agree to amend the articles

    3. Congress had no power to raise taxes

      • the county couldn’t pay war debts

    4. No national currency

    5. Congress had no power to raise a national army

  • These weaknesses culminated into Shay’s Rebellion

    • Congress had no money and couldn’t pay their war soldiers

    • This hurt farmers who had were in debt as a result of fighting in the war, and had trouble paying them off due to high taxes

      • The government wouldn’t do anything about it

    • Shay raised a rebellion, symbolizing the problems of the articles which the founders heavily considered when drafting the Constitution

1.5 - Ratification of the Constitution

Q: Explain the ongoing impact of political negotiation and compromise at the Constitutional Convention on the development of the constitutional system

  • Constitutional Convention:

    • Fix the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, by drawing up a new document

  • Compromises of the Constitution:

    1. Great Compromise: How people would be represented, and how representatives would be handed out

      • Virginia Plan: Representatives apportioned by population

        • Bigger states would have more representation and smaller states would have less

      • New Jersey Plan: Representative apportioned equally, so each state gets one vote

        • Favored smaller states

      • Led to a Bicameral Legislature:

        • A Congress with two houses

          1. House of Representatives:

            • Apportioned by population

            • Big states have more, and small states have less

            • Each state would have the same number of electors (people who put the president in office) as they have representatives in Congress

          2. Senate:

            • Apportioned equally with each state

            • Each state got two senators

    2. 3/5ths Compromise: How enslaved people would count towards representation

      • Decided upon counting three-fifths of the enslaved population for purposes of representation

      • Also counted three-fifths of them for taxation purposes

    3. Importation of Enslaved People:

      • Struck a deal stating that slave trade wouldn’t be touched for another 20 years

        • After that, it would be abolished

  • Article V:

    • More attainable means of granting amendments

    • Two stages to ratify:

      1. Proposal:

        • Either Congress or special state conventions can propose an amendment

        • Requires two-thirds (2/3) vote to pass the amendment to the next stage

      2. Ratification:

        • Needs to be ratified/accepted by three-fourths (3/4) of the states

          • Can be done by state legislatures or state ratifying conventions

  • Where this debate is still seen today:

    1. Government Surveillance:

      • In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act to find and stop future terrorists

        • The terrorists who carried out 9/11 had been living in the United States for quite some time completely unnoticed

        • the Act tapped phones and monitored the emails of Americans

          • Reflects the old debates about central power and individual rights

    2. Education:

      • Normally Education falls within the states

        • In 2001, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act

        • In order to receive federal funding, schools would have to meet certain criteria

          • Schools couldn’t meet the criteria and the government placed sanctions on certain states

            • Also reflects the old debates about central power and individual rights

1.6 - Principles of American Government

Q: Explain the constitutional principles of separation of powers and “checks and balances”

Q: Explain the implications of separation of powers and “checks and balances” for the U.S. political system

  • Separation of Powers:

    • Not one branch of government holds all the power/authority

    • This is seen in the Constitution

      • The Articles of Confederation had a unitary branch of government

      • The Constitution separated the government into 3 branches:

        1. Legislative Branch:

          • Made up of Congress, which is the House of Representative plus the Senate

          • Propose and Make laws, which no other branch can do

        2. Executive Branch:

          • Refers to the President and the Bureaucracy, which is under the presidents authority

          • Execute the laws, or enforce the laws, which no other branch can do

        3. Judicial Branch:

          • Refers to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, and the system courts throughout the land

          • Interprets the constitutionally of the Law, which no other branch can do

      • Each branch has the power to “check” each branch:

        1. Legislative branch can check executive branch with its power of advice and consent:

          • Designed for the Senate, who approve high level position appointments, like cabinet members or supreme court nominees.

        2. Legislative branch has the power of impeachment over the president

        3. Executive branch can check Congress through the veto:

          • Enumerated in the Constitution, where the president can reject bills that reach their desk

        4. Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds (2/3) vote

          • The bill becomes a law without the president signing off on it

        5. Judicial branch has the power of Judicial Review:

          • Isn’t in the Constitution, but was established early

          • Can declare laws passed by Congress Unconstitutional and remove them

Diagram of Checks and Balances
  • Checks and Balances regarding Federalist 51:

    • Separation of powers and checks and balances are able to control the potential abuse of power by a branch

      • For this to work, each branch needs to work independently of the others as possible

      • They also need to have the right checking powers so the other branches are kept in their lane

    • A big danger to the new republic would be to invest too much power into one branch

  • Various access points for stakeholders to our system of government:

    • Stakeholder: Anyone with a vested interest in the outcome of policymaking

      • The citizens are the stakeholders, since we are affected by the outcome of legislation

      • For instance, Interest groups can pay lobbyists to meet with representative in order to make them aware of the group’s cause and hopefully vote on that cause

        • Outside of Interest groups, people can just write letters or emails to representatives

      • Citizens also have access to the bureaucratic agencies, which are run by the executive branch

        • Stakeholders (Citizens) can file a complaint against the agencies if the law is broken or a crime is committed

      • Stakeholders can also use the courts to challenge unjust and unconstitutional laws or appeal wrongful convictions

    • Citizens being stakeholders means that we can interact with the governmental process and uphold the principle of checks and balances

1.7 - The Relationship Between States and the Federal government

Q: Explain how societal needs affect the constitutional allocation of power between the national and state government

  • Federalism: Sharing of power between state and national governments

    • Describing the relationship between state and national power:

      1. Exclusive Powers: Powers delegated by the Constitution to the federal government alone

        • For example, only the national congress can declare war

      2. Reserved Powers: Powers kept by the states

        • Comes from the 10th amendment: “…Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…are reserved to the States.”

        • For example: Policing, Hospitals, Education

      3. Concurrent Powers: Both national and state governments share powers

        • For example, taxation is shared by both the state and national governments

  • How the sharing of federalism has shifted between the national and state government:

    • Fiscal Federalism: Federalism via dollars

      • Congress can establish national standards by directing funds to states to comply with those standards

      • Congress can also withhold funding from states who do not apply with those standards

    • Fiscal Federalism happens through grants:

      1. Categorical Grant:

        • Gives federal money to that states as long as they comply with specific federal standards

          • For Example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would withhold federal money to segregated schools

            • If they wanted funds, they had to comply with desegregating their schools

        • These grants were mainly used to uphold the civil rights agenda of equality

      2. Block Grants:

        • Returned some of the power back to the states

        • Gives federal money to be spent in a broad category

          • The states determine how they want to spend that money within those boundaries of the said category

          • For example, the Community Development Block Grant Program gives money to the states for the purposes of community development

            • The states can determine what kind of community develop they want to do, such as building sewage plants or redeveloping abandoned homes

            • States have a lot more decision power with block grants

      3. Mandates:

        • The federal government requires states to follow federal directives, and gives money toward the carrying out of this

          • For example, the Clean Air Act created national environmental standards

      4. Unfunded Mandate:

        • The federal government sets a mandate and then provides no funds to help states comply

          • For example, the No Child Left Behind Act required states to give standardized tests and work towards improvements if scores did not get better

            • The schools had to pay for the improvements

        • Unfunded mandates have become more rare, however, after Regan’s Devolution Revolution

        • The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act severely limited the federal government’s ability to issue unfunded mandates

    • Fiscal Federalism shows how depending on the issues of the day, the sharing of power has shifted between the state and national government

1.8 - Constitutional Interpretations of Federalism

Q: Explain how the appropriate balance of power between national and state governments has been interpreted differently over time

  • 14th Amendment:

    • Passed during the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War

    • Applied the Bill of Rights to the states, where citizens have protection of their rights on the federal and state level

      • This was especially important for newly freed black people who were protected by the federal government, but not in their state government

        • States could and did violate their rights, and had complete immunity to do so

  • Commerce Clause, Article I Section 8:

    • Gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states (interstate commerce)

  • Necessary and Proper Clause / Elastic Clause, Article I Section 8:

    • Congress has the power to pass any law which it deems “Necessary and Proper” to carry out the enumerated powers

      • Example: Since Congress has the power to raise taxes (Enumerated), it should be allowed to establish a national bank (Necessary and Proper)

  • Full Faith and Credit Clause, Article IV:

    • Each state must respect the other’s laws

      • For example, your driver’s license is SC will still be valid in NC and you wouldn’t have to get a new license every time you crossed the border

    • However, if New York legalizes same-sex marriage but South Carolina doesn’t, is same-sex valid in South Carolina? Does South Carolina have to comply with the Full Faith and Credit Clause?

      • This question prompted Congress to pass the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gave states the right to NOT recognize marital status of same-sex couples

        • States are asserting their power here

      • However, with the SCOTUS ruling with Obergefell v. Hodges, power was shifted back federally

        • This ruling maintained that same-sex marriage was a fundamental right that could not be infringed upon

  • Court cases that represent the shifting of power between federal and state governments:

    1. McCulloh v. Maryland:

      • Congress established a bank in Maryland

      • Maryland heavily taxed the bank, but the federal bank refused to pay the tax

      • The court utilized the Necessary and Proper clause, saying that it implied certain powers for the federal government

        • Even if it wasn’t explicitly mentioned, the federal government had the right to set up the bank

      • Marshall, the chief justice, went on the further say that the supremacy clause would always trump state law when the two were in conflict

    2. The United States v. Lopez:

      • Congress passed the Gun Free School Zones Act to try and prevent gun violence, prohibiting guns on school property

      • Congress used the Commerce Clause to justify this:

        • If guns were on school grounds, then the learning environment would be diminished, and neighborhoods would grow worse ultimately hurting interstate commerce

      • A kid in Texas brought a gun to school, and was charged with violating the federal law

      • The ruling favored the states, as they cleared that gun laws are in the domain of the states and could never link to interstate commerce

1.9 - Federalism in Action

Q: Explain how the distribution of powers among the three federal branches and between national AND state governments impacts policymaking

  • Federalism illustrated by Environmental Regulation:

    • The United States entered into the Paris Agreement (Protecting the Environment) by means of executive order during the Obama administration

      • This led to new environmental regulations being imposed on the states, who had to reduce their carbon emissions

    • However, when Trump entered officed he removed America from the Paris Agreement

      • Regardless, some states decided to keep the regulations imposed by the Paris Agreement, such as California

        • Factories in California have to abide by much stricter state limits rather than loose federal limits

  • Federalism illustrated by the legalization of marijuana:

    • States are laboratories for democracy

      • This means that states will pass certain laws and then representatives in the federal government will determine if it needs to become a law nationally

        • Legalization of Marijuana is an example of this

          • Marijuana has been illegal federally since the 1930s, but Nixon’s War on Drugs really cracked down on it

            • The Controlled Substances Act had severe punishment for possessing and using Marijuana

            • However. in the 80s and 90s, there was a growing amount of research showing that Marijuana could be used as a therapeutic in certain medical cases

              • California legalized medical marijuana in 1996 by a state-wide vote

              • Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012

              • Even though it was a federal crime, Obama essentially ignored it as executive of the government

              • Colorado is acting as a laboratory for democracy here

Unit 2 - Interactions

2.1 - The Senate and the House of Representatives

Q: Describe the different structures, powers, and functions of each house in Congress

  • Congress is Bicameral Legislature

    • Contains two houses:

      1. The House of Representatives:

        • Each state is represented by population

          • More populous states have more representatives, and less populous states have less

        • Each state is guaranteed at least one representative

        • Capped at 435

        • The Census is how we get the number of representatives for each state

        • Must be at least 25 years old

        • Hold two year terms

          • The short terms means that representatives have to be much more responsive to the people who elected them

            • They are closer to the issues that people in their districts care about

          • Less likely to form bipartisan groups in order to pursue legislative goals

      2. The Senate:

        • Each state is represented equally with two representatives

        • Considered the more “mature” body since the members are older (Must be at least 30)

        • Less connected to the people they represent

          • Hold six year terms

  • Congress embodies the Legislative Branch of the Government

    • Their main purpose is to make laws, which no other branch of the government can do

  • How Laws are made

    • Both houses of Congress have to agree by vote on identical versions of the bill

      • If they do, it then gets passed to the president for signing

  • Rules for debate

    • The senate allows for unlimited debate (relaxed and informal)

    • The house is restricted to an hour for debate (structured and governed by rules)

  • Article I, Section 8

    • Where Congress gets its power and what kinds of power they have

      • This section lists the enumerated (listed out) powers of Congress:

        1. Power to pass a federal budget (power of the purse)

          • Incredibly complex, and can take months of negotiation

        2. Power to raise revenue

          • Accomplished by income taxes, tariffs, etc.

        3. Power to coin money

        4. Power to declare war

        5. Raise and maintain the armed forces

      • Implied Powers:

        • Belong to Congress, but aren’t actually written in Article I, section 8

        • Gets this power from the “Necessary and Proper Clause”

          • Congress uses this clause to pass a wide range of legislation

2.2 - Structures, Powers, and Functions of Congress

Q: Explain how the structure, powers, and functions of both houses of Congress affect the policy-making process

  • Leadership structure:

    • House of Representatives Leadership:

      1. Speaker of the House

        • House members will choose this leader, so the speaker will always be a member of the majority party

        • This role makes committee assignments

      2. Majority and Minority Leaders

        • Guide their party members on how to vote

        • Help to direct debate

        • Wanting to make sure that their members are working together to achieve policy outcomes favorable to their party

      3. Majority and Minority Whips

        • Responsible for party discipline

        • Make sure party members walk in line with the goals of the party

    • The Senate Leadership:

      1. President of the Senate

        • Vice President of the United States

        • Non-voting member of the Senate

        • Votes to break a tie

      2. President Pro Tempore

        • Member of the majority party

        • Leads the Senate when the Vice President is away

      3. Majority and Minority Leaders

        • Majority leader sets the legislative agenda

          • Does this by controlling the calendar assignments of bills’

  • Committees: How each house gets its legislative work done

    • Both houses use this as a practical necessity

      • Committees are smaller groups of legislators who debate and draft precise legislation that would be impossible in the large group setting of the house/senate

      • Four types of Committees:

        1. Standing Committee: Remains from session to session, as the deal with issues that are always present

          • For example, the Appropriations Committee in the Senate who debate on where federal money is going to be spent

          • The Ways and Means Committee in the House is responsible for various kinds of taxation bills

        2. Join Committee: Involves members from both the House and the Senate

          • For example, the Join Committee on the Library and the Join Committee on Printing deals with the publishing aspect of the federal government

          • Sometimes these Committees can be formed for the short-term (temporarily)

        3. Select Committee: A temporary committee that is formed for a specific purpose

        4. Conference Committee: Formed if both houses can’t agree on an identical version of a bill

      • Even though both houses use Committees, the different constitutional responsibilities of the House and the Senate affect the policy making process in committees

  • Exactly how Congress gets its work done:

    1. The House

      • The House Rules Committee: The Gatekeeper for all legislation

        • Decides when votes take place

        • Assigns bills to various committees for debate and revision

      • The Committee of the Whole: A procedural move that relaxes some of the debate so that amendments to bills can be debated quicker

      • Discharge Petition: A house can muster a majority vote to bring a bill out of a committee and into the floor for a vote

    2. The Senate

      • Enjoy unlimited debate time

        • Allows for the filibuster, which attempts to stall or kill a bill by talking for a very long time

          • Cloture Rule: Moves to end a filibuster by means of a three-fifths (3/5) vote

      • Utilizes Unanimous Consent to get work done:

        • A call to agree to restrict certain privileges in order to get work done faster

          • For example, members can vote on disbanding the filibuster temporarily

  • How a bill becomes a law

    • A bill can be sponsored by a member from either the House or the Senate

      • As the bill is considered and debated, it often changes

        • Non-germane Riders are added, which are provisions to the bill which have nothing to do with the subject of the bill

        • Pork Barrel Spending can change a bill, when funds get earmarked for a certain representatives district

      • When the bill is assigned to a committee, it can be further debated and changed

        • When it comes out of the committee, it goes to the floor for a vote

          • This process can be affected by logrolling, when representatives agree to vote for each other’s bills (back scratching)

  • The Federal Budget

    • One of the most complex legislation that Congress must consider

      • Two kinds of spending they must consider:

        1. Mandatory Spending: Money that must be allocated by law

          • For example, Medicare/Medicaid by law have to be paid for

        2. Discretionary Spending: Spending up to the legislators

      • The government spends more money than it has, which is called deficit spending

        • To get more money, they must raise taxes or borrow money

2.3 - Congressional behavior

Q: Explain how congressional behavior is influenced by election processes, partisanship, and divided government

  • Ideological Division

    • Liberals and Conservatives represent two different ideologies, or sets of assumptions/principles

    • Over the last 30 years, Republicans have become more conservative and Democrats have become more liberal

      • This polarization has serious implications, as their ideas about what’s best for the nation decreasingly overlap, making it difficult to negotiate and compromise

        • Our system of government requires negotiation and compromise

      • When bills come up we get policy gridlock, or partisan fighting, as healthy debate doesn’t occur.

        • Seriously impedes the process of getting laws passed

      • As a result, to get work done quickly, it’s best to have a a majority in both the House and the Senate, so they can always pass legislation

        • For example, this is how FDR got so many of his New Deal programs passed in his first 100 days in office

        • In more recent times, it’s how Obama got his healthcare plan passed over Republican objectives

  • Divided Government:

    • Opposing parties hold majorities in opposite houses, or the president is from one party and Congress is a majority from the opposing party

      • For example, Obama in 2016 (His last months of office - 2nd term) had the chance to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice

        • Here, he is a lame duck president since he is at the end of his term

          • Congress doesn’t have much incentive to work with him to pass his agenda

        • Obama nominated someone to correspond with his liberal ideology

        • The divided government prevented the nomination from occurring

      • However, In 2020, Trump nominated someone to the Supreme Court in the last months of his presidency

        • Republicans still had control of the Senate, but did not follow the precedent set with Obama.

        • They used a lot of effort to move along confirmation hearings for a conservative justice

          • This shows how a government dominated by one party can speed up the work of Congress

  • The way representatives understand their role

    • Three ways they can think about it:

      1. Delegate Model: Believes he/she/they must vote with the will of the people

        • This representative believes they are there to represent the people’s beliefs and desires, not their own

        • This model is very common in the house, because they must answer to the people every two years for their reelection

      2. Trustee Model: Believes they have been entrusted with the people’s faith, and therefore must vote according to their own conscience

        • A Trustee can actually vote against the will of the people if they believe it to be the right thing to do

        • A Trustee TRUSTS in themselves

      3. Politico Model: Hybrid of the Delegate and Trustee Model

        • They will act as a delegate when it’s clear that their constituencies feel strongly about an issue, but will act as a trustee if they do not feel strongly about an issue

  • Redistricting:

    • Happens every ten years from the census, when districts are drawn to reflect the most current population numbers

      • This can be chaotic, especially when they are not reapportioned properly

    • Reflected in the SCOTUS case, Baker v Carr

      • In Tennessee, redrawing districts had not been done properly and rural voters had a lot more voting power than urban residents

        • This violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment

      • Resulted in the one-person-one-one vote principle

        • This means redistricting had to be done in a way where everyone’s vote was equally powerful

    • Gerrymandering: Districts being drawn in such a way to benefit one party/group over another (Picture)

      • Partisan Gerrymandering occurs when districts are redrawn to benefit one party over another

      • Racial Gerrymandering

        • This is reflected in Shaw v Reno

          • Two North Carolina districts were drawn in odd shapes in order to create black districts

            • The Court ruled that drawing districts based on race was dangerous, as it could be used in other situations to disenfranchise minority voters, and the practice was deemed unconstitutional

    • The above demonstrate the factors that affect how well Congress is able to do their job. This includes ideological division or alignment, whether representatives understand themselves as trustees, delegates, or politicos, and the process of redistricting and gerrymandering

2.4 - The Roles and Powers of the President

Q: Explain how the president can implement a policy agenda

  • Policy Agenda: Every president has policies that they campaign on

    • Acts as an informal contract between the candidate and the people who vote the president in

    • For example: “If you elect me, here are the laws that I will work to put into place”

    • However, we know that the president does not have the ability to pass laws, as only Congress can do that

      • As a result, the president uses formal powers and informal powers:

  • Formal Powers: Powers explicitly given to the executive Article II of the Constitution

    1. Commander-In-Chief

      • While Congress has the ability to declare war, the president can use this power to implement presidential policy agenda

        • For Example, Biden campaigned on the promise of ending the Afghanistan War and sending home the troops

        • As the Commander-In-Chief, he has the authority to do this and he has done that

        • This shows Biden’s Policy Agenda, and he uses formal powers to get it done

    2. Power of the Veto

      • any bill that comes across the presidential desk Congress can override the veto with two-thirds vote of each house

      • President has 10 days to sign a bill once it arrives on desk

      • Pocket Veto: If Congress adjourns before that 10 day period is up, the president just doesn’t sign the bill

      • The President will veto a law if it is not in line with the presidential policy agenda

  • Informal Powers: Not mentioned in the Constitution, but they exist because of the nature of executive power

    1. Bargaining and Persuasion

      • The President has the ear of the nation in a way that no other political does

        • The President can attempt to talk to the people and persuade them to put pressure on their representatives, so that his agenda can get pushed forward

      • The President can also bargain with Congress to get favorable legislation passed

        • Bargaining is correlated with the presidential approval rating

        • A president with a high approval rating can have a lot of leverage to get Congress to pass legislation, but the opposite occurs with a president with a low approval rating

    2. Executive Orders

      • A directive from the president that has the force of a federal law, but is not actually a law

        • As the President, they are the head of the entire bureaucracy

        • these bureaucracies answer directly to the president, and depend on Congress for their funding

        • The executive branch exists to EXECUTE the laws passed by Congress

      • The executive orders allows the president to direct the bureaucracy, or move money around, to accomplish their policy agenda

      • For example, Trump rerouted funds by executive order between his executive departments because he wasn’t able to persuade Congress to pass legislation to build a wall

    3. Signing Statement

      • This is an additional statement that the president can offer when signing a bill into law

        • this informs the nation how they interpret the law, and how they intend to execute it

      • For example, FDR issued a signing statement when signing a law during WW2

        • He mentioned that he disagreed with one of the sections, but he had no choice but to sign a law because a veto would have delayed US efforts on the warfront

    4. Executive Agreement

      • This is an agreement between the president and another head of state

      • Not a formal treaty, but rather an agreement that the President makes on his or her own authority

      • Only exist as long as that president is in power, so they are more politically than legally binding

2.5 - Checks on the Presidency

Q: Explain how the president’s agenda can create tension and frequent confrontations with Congress

= doesn’t create many problems

😡 = does create problems

  • The Main problem

    • Is usually between the President and the Senate, because constitutionally, the Senate is given the power of Advice and Consent

      • Many presidential appointments have to first be approved by the Senate

  • Ambassadors to Others Nations

    • US diplomats who are assigned to various countries to organize the presence of the US there, and to nurture the relationship between the US and that foreign nation

    • Usually, the Senate is perfectly fine with the choice of ambassador

  • White House Staff

    • Need no approval by the Senate

    • The President appoints all kinds of staffers to work the executive offices

    • They are usually people who ran the President’s campaign or are friendly with the President

  • Cabinet Appointments

    • The Cabinet represents all the heads of the main executive departments

    • Are usually approved without much of a fight, but there have been times when cabinet appointments have caused a lot of attention

      • The last time a cabinet appointee was actually rejected was in 1989, when the person was an alleged womanizer and drunkard

  • Federal and Supreme Court Appointments 😡

    • Justices to the Supreme Court must be confirmed by the Senate

      • Fighting can be pretty dirty, as the stakes are HIGH since justices hold their positions FOR LIFE

      • Wanting Supreme Court Justices that align with your ideology as President can help uphold your agenda long after your four year term is up

        • For example, Robert Bork was not confirmed by the Senate because he made it clear that he would rule in ways that would roll back the liberal civil rights SCOTUS decisions made in previous decades

          • Ultimately, Bork was rejected

2.6 - Expansion of Federal Power

Q: Explain how presidents have interpreted and justified their use of formal and informal powers

  • Reminders

    • Formal powers are powers granted to the president explicitly in Article II of the Constitution, such as the veto and the power to appoint federal judges

    • Informal powers are not explicitly mentioned in the constitution, but the president exercises nonetheless, such as bargaining and persuasion and executive agreements

    • Over time, presidents have used more and more of both powers, resulting in a much more powerful executive than at the start of the republic

      • Growth in the power of the executive branch was one of the chief fears that anti-federalists were concerned about during the ratification debates of the Constitution

  • Fears about the Executive Branch in Federalist 70

    • Hamilton argues for a single executive, while anti-federalists argued that executive power needed to be divided among a few presidents

      • The Anti-federalists feared that one executive would be “the fetus of monarchy”, as one president could potentially consolidate too much power

    • However, Hamilton argues that a single executive is important because:

      1. A single person can act more decisively when required

      2. A single executive will actually be a protection against expansion of executive power

        • If a president attempts to grab too much power, everyone knows exactly who to blame

        • They would be much more inclined to be careful since they would be watched so closely

    • However, it is true that federal power has expanded significantly over time, and that change is largely due to how the president understands their role

  • Illustration of 2 opposing interpretations of the executive role:

    1. Teddy Roosevelt - For the People

      • Said that the President was “A steward of the people” who needed to do all that they could, unless it wasn’t allowed by the Constitution/Laws

        • In other words, the president should act on behalf of the people in every conceivable manner unless explicitly restricted by the constitution

    2. William Howard Taft - Restricted Powers

      • Said that the President can use “no power” that cannot be traced to some other power

        • In other words, Taft argued for a much more restricted understanding of executive power in that you should do NOTHING unless the constitution said you could

  • The executive role shifting in different US Presidents throughout history:

    • George Washington wanted to differ to Congress, which was the people’s branch (Restricted Power)

    • A huge shift from that perspective came from Andrew Jackson, who believed himself to be the representative for the people and therefore was mandated to carry out their will (For the People)

      • Constitutionally, it’s Congress that represents the people’s will.

        • Jackson took that mantle upon himself

      • This change is seen with the amount of Vetoes that Jackson enacted

        • Washington Vetoes 2 bills, while Jackson vetoes 12 bills

    • Executive power was further expanded with the Lincoln Administration, as he was heavily involved in the Civil War (For the People)

      • He assumed executive power in order to save the union and to emancipate the enslave population

      • He suspended the constitutional right of “habeas corpus”, so people could be arrested without a proper trial

      • This shows how Lincoln greatly expanded power for the executive

    • FDR massively expanded the role of the executive (For the People)

      • He was elected during the Great Depression, and he utilized broad use of his executive power in order to pass New Deal legislation aimed at helping Americans from economic suffering

        • He created new agencies, spent a lot of federal money putting people to jobs, and he used the veto more than any other president before him (635 times!)

        • He was also elected 4 times, breaking the tradition of two terms set by Washington

        • He even tried to push out Supreme Court justices who disagreed with him (didn’t work though)

      • However, he proves Hamilton’s point made in Federalist 70

        • In the 1930s, the nation was in crisis and FDR came in to handle it; he was an energetic executive who was able to act decisively

    • Since FDR’s presidency, federal power has expanded and contrasted somewhat

      • However, it has never gone back to the smaller scope of power that we had in G. Washington

      • After FDR, the government was HUGE

  • Today

    • Since the government has gotten so huge, the debate is now a smaller big government vs. bigger big government

  • Checks on Executive Power

    • Just because a president has more power, does not mean that they are immune to checks and balances of other branches

      • For example, Trump was impeached twice during his four years in office

        • This shows that the president is not all-powerful

    • Also, after FDR’s four terms we ratified the 22nd amendment which limited the president to two terms

2.7 - Presidential Communication

Q: Explain how Communication Technology has changed the president’s relationship with the national constituency (citizens) and the other branches

  • Advantage of the President:

    • The President has the unique attention of the nation, that no other single politician has

      • If you stopped a random person on the street, it’s likely that they would not be able to name their congressional representative or even know their face!

    • Namely, everyone knows who the president is

    • If people are keeping track of politics, they have their eye on the president

      • Remember that among the informal powers of the president, they have the power of persuasion which they use to essentially communicate with the nation and the other branches of government

    • Teddy Roosevelt called the Presidency a "Bully Pulpit”, or an effective mean to widely share one’s views and influence public opinion.

      • It’s a platform to advocate for an agenda

  • Presidential Communication

    • The only constitutionally required communication from the President is the State of the Union Address, which is required time to time in order to recommend to Congress measures to enact

      • This happens at the beginning of every year, and the President makes all kinds of policy recommendations to Congress while the Nation listens along

        • NO other politician has that kind of power

    • Presidential communication has changed over time due to technology

      • Washington along with earlier presidents had their State of the Union Address along with other presidential speeches were reported in the Newspaper

    • Over time, the bully pulpit principle has become even more prolific

      • This is seen with FDR’s Presidency in the 1930s, where many Americans had radios to listen to the news

        • FDR hosted Fireside Chats on the Radio in which he explained in lay terms the outlines of major proposals that would help the country, like a bank holiday to fix the baking crisis

        • This was a success, because FDR was able to get a staggering amount of legislation passed in his first 100 days in office

  • Impact of Television and Social Media

    • When Television came along, it changed the nature of the bully pulpit as well

      • A president could speak directly to the people audibly AND visually

        • Television essentially required the President to look and sound good

    • With the rise of Social Media, the bully pulpit once again transformed greatly

      • With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., the President was able to speak directly to the American People without third party mediators like a Television

      • The speed at which the president could comment publicly in response to public image was unprecedented

      • Donald Trump, for instance, heavily utilized twitter as he tweeted over 26,000(!) times

        • He used Twitter to praise loyalists, attack opponents, and urge Americans to support his policy agenda

2.8 - The Judicial Branch

Q: Explain the principle of judicial review and how it checks the power of the other institutions and state governments

  • Structure of the Federal Courts

    • 3 tier hierarchy to the federal court system:

      1. Supreme Court

        • Sits at the top, as it is the only court officially established by Constitution in Article III

        • Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president, confirmed by the senate, and serve lifetime appointments on good behavior

        • Jurisdiction: How much power the court has, or in this case, what kind of cases the court can hear

          • Original Jurisdiction: The court can hear a case for the first time

          • Appellate Jurisdiction: The court can only hear appeals from lower courts

        • The Supreme Court has both original and appellate jurisdiction, but the scope of its original jurisdiction is narrow

          • It has original jurisdiction in cases between two states or involving an ambassador or other public official

          • As a result, a majority of the cases appearing before the Supreme Court are appeals

    • Article III, section 1 tells us that Supreme Court is established by the Constitution, but it also gives Congress the power to establish lower courts as necessary

    • The Judiciary act of 1789 established the system of courts

      1. Court of Appeals

        • The Nation is divided into 12 regions, where each region gets one Appeals Court

        • Their job is to make sure that the law was applied correctly from lower court cases

        • Only have Appellate Jurisdiction

        • There are 3 judges and no jury

      2. US District Courts

        • 94 scattered throughout the nation

        • Only have Original Jurisdiction

        • Cases are heard by a judge and a jury

        • Each state has at least one federal district court

  • Power of the Courts

    • Judicial Review: The Court has the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws

      • This law is not explicitly granted

    • One part of Judicial Review came from Federalist 78:

      • Hamilton argues that the independence of the judicial branch built a protective wall around its power, because of the lifetime appointment of its judges

      • Lifetime appointments insulated the judges from political pressure, so they could focus exclusively on constitutional interpretation of laws

      • The nature of the Court’s power is its exercise of judicial review, and the court should be able to consider the laws passed by the legislature constitutional or not

        • If not, they should be able to strike them down

    • Another part of Judicial Review came from Marbury v Madison in 1803

      • This established the precedent of judicial review for the Supreme Court

      • When the court exercises the power of judicial review, it’s using the most potent checking power that it has on the other branches

2.9 - Legitimacy of the Judicial Branch

Q: Explain how the exercise of judicial review in conjunction with life tenure can lead to debate about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s power

  • Reminders

    • Federal Judges are not elected but rather appointed and hold life tenure on the condition of good behavior

      • Anti-federalists did not like this, because they believed that if judges were insulated from the people, the judges would be tempted to slide into tyranny

    • The Court has the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws, so unconstitutional laws become null and void (Judicial Review)

  • The role of precedence in the Court’s decision making process

    • Precedents: The decision in question will act like a template for future decisions

    • Whenever the court rules on a case, it creates a precedent

      • For example, Brown v. Board of Education established the PRECEDENT that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional

      • If there are cases with similar facts of previous cases, the Court won’t even hear the case because of this concept

    • The principle that governs the emphasis on precedents: Stare Decisis

      • Latin for “Let the Decision Stand”

    • As a result, the court always considers past precedence which are bound by the principles of Stare Decisis in making their ruling

      • However, this does not mean the precedents cannot be overturned.

        • When this happens, it’s a big deal

        • For example, Brown v. Board of Education was itself an overturning of the precedent established in Plessy v Ferguson which upheld racial segregation

  • What factors determine if a precedent will stand or be overturned?

    • There are a lot, such as if justices consider this idea of

      1. Loose Constructionism, where justices consider the Constitution a living, evolving document

      2. Strict Constructionism, where justices interpret the Constitution as the words are literally written

    • There is also the ideological makeup of the court, whether the justices are liberal or conservative

      • The President will appoint judges that align with their political ideology

        • When controversial rulings are handed, presidents will try and appoint judges who will overturn the precedents set by hose decisions

    • This shows that by it’s power of judicial review and the ideological makeup of its justices, decisions handed down by the Supreme Court can have far-reaching effects

      • Those effects are felt by the population, leading some of them to question the legitimacy of the court

2.10 & 2.11 - The Supreme Court in Action AND how it can be checked

Q: Explain how the exercise of judicial review in conjunction with life tenure can lead to debate about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s power

Q: Explain how other branches of government can limit the Supreme Court’s power

  • Decisions that the Court hands out:

    1. Judicial Activism: When a court acts to establish policy and its deliberative work, considers the broad effects of a decision on society

      • It’s like saying the Court is going beyond the Constitution to establish the ideological will of the majority

      • It’s not a conservative or liberal thing, justices of both ideologies have been accused of judicial activism

        • For example, Brown v Board of Education led to the integration of schools, and it overturned the precedent of legal racial segregation (Liberal Warren Court being accused of Activism)

        • On the other hand, Citizens United v. FEC which dealt with campaign finance gave Republican candidates an edge (Conservative Warren Court being accused of Activism)

    2. Judicial Restraint: Believes that judges are not appointed to make policy, so a law should be struck down only if it violates the actual written words of the Constitution

      • Put a huge emphasis on precedent and the principle of stare decisis

      • This conviction has also created the occasion for a violation of civil rights, such as in the separate but equal doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson

        • Justices can be kept from overturning precedents that need to be overturned

  • Controversial Decision that led to people questioning the Courts legitimacy:

    1. Dred Scott v. Sandford

      • Dredd Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslavement was invalid since he lived on free territory

      • The Taney court established that since enslaved people were not technically citizens, Scott had no right to sue in federal court

      • The Court also struck down the Compromise of 1820 as unconstitutional on the grounds that enslaved people were considered property, and the 5th amendment protects a person’s property

      • This decision effectively opened up the entire nation to slavery

        • This would be a case of Judicial Activism, because a dissenting opinion expressed how Scott not having citizenship had no relation to striking down the compromise of 1820

      • The outcome of this decision was massive, as it was important to keep the issue of slavery balanced so no region had an advantage over the other

      • This decision was a huge win for the slave states, and abolitionists were furious because a group of unelected judges overturned a law that was keeping slavery confined to the south, bringing into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court

  • How other branches of government can check the decision of the Supreme Court:

    1. Passing laws the modify the impact of prior decisions

      • For example, the court struck down the Gun Free Schools Zone Act with the ruling of United States v. Lopez

        • In the same year, Congress amended that law to uphold keeping guns out of schools but made it clearer how such a law related to the commerce clause

    2. Constitutional Amendments

      • In response to the Dredd Scott decision, Congress passed the 13th Amendment which banned slavery

    3. Passing legislation that impacts the Court’s jurisdiction

    4. Judicial Appointments by the President

    5. the President not enforcing the decision handed down

2.12 - The Federal Bureaucracy

Q: Explain how the bureaucracy carries out the responsibilities of the federal government

  • What is the Federal Bureaucracy?

    • Millions of people who are employed to carry out the responsibilities of the federal government

    • Falls under the authority of the Executive Branch

  • Basic Structure:

    1. Cabinet Departments:

      • 15 departments

      • President’s Cabinet are the heads of cabinet departments

    2. Agencies:

      • Work together to accomplish the goals of the department

    3. Independent Regulatory Commissions: somewhat apart from the President’s authority, but still accosted with the bureaucracy

      • Created for the specific purpose of regulating some aspect of society, like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

    4. Government Corporations:

      • Hybrid between a government agency and a private business

      • Created when services exist that the government wants to offer to the public, but the free market is the best way to do it

      • For example, the US Postal Service is one of the biggest

  • What these entities do to carry out the will of the executive branch:

    • They write and enforce regulations, such as the FCC enforcing Closed Captioning for people with disabilities

    • Issue fines for non-compliance, known as compliance monitoring

    • Interact with Congress

      • Department heads are often experts in their field, so they go to Congressional Committees and testify on the dealings of their department/agency

    • Bureaucratic agencies work very closely with interest groups and Congressional Committees

      • When they do so, this relationship is called an Iron Triangle

      • these 3 Entities work together, relying on each other’s strength in order to make policy

        Iron Triangle Visualized
        • However, issue networks pose a threat to Iron Triangles

          • For example, an Iron Triangle formed around Tobacco Interests can be severely disrupted by an Issue Network

          • An issue network is a conglomeration of folks who sometimes disagree about a lot of things, but come together about 1 specific issue to make change

  • How the efficiency of the Bureaucracy changes over time

    • This is mostly due to how people come to work in the bureaucracy

      • It used to be given to people via an application if you supported the President's campaign

      • After Garfield was assassinated, it shifted to a merit-based system for applicants seeking jobs in the Bureaucracy

2.13 - Bureaucracy: Discretionary and Rule Making Authority

Q: Explain how the federal bureaucracy uses delegated discretionary authority for rule making and implementation

  • Federal Bureaucracy

    • Made up of millions of people who work for all the agencies and departments that fall under the authority of the executive branch

  • Branch Responsibilities

    1. Legislative Branch passes laws

    2. Judicial Branch interprets laws

    3. Executive Branch ensures people abide by laws

      • The President is the figurehead of the Executive, because constitutionally it’s the president who is responsible for executing the laws

  • How does the law actually get executed?

    • The Bureaucracy does this, and there are many of them

    • Departments/Agencies are left with a directive where the outcome is clear, but the details are vague

  • Delegated Discretionary Authority

    • Describes the kind of power that the Bureaucracy has

    • The power that they have is delegated to them, since they don’t have actually have any constitutional power

    • They have discretion to decide how/when to implement the law

      • They have Rule Making Authority, which means they are the ones who make the specific rules for how the law will be carried out

        • For example, the 16th amendment, ratified in 1913, establishes the income tax

        • The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a Bureaucratic Agency, enforces this amendment

        • They make all the rules on how taxes are going to be collected, such as saying that taxes are due April 15th

  • Examples:

    1. Department of Homeland Security

      • Protects Americans from terrorism and matins and control borders

    2. Department of Transportation

      • Manages all kinds of transportation like highway and air travel

    3. Department of Veteran Affairs

      • Manages the general welfare of nation’s veterans

    4. Department of Education

      • Manges states and their implementation of federal educational standards

    5. Environmental Protection Agency

      • Protects the environment and human health through environmental regulations

    6. Federal Election Commission

      • Administers and enforces campaign finance laws

    7. Securities and Exchange Commission

      • Regulates the Stock Market and prevents fraud

2.14 - 2.15 - Holding the Bureaucracy Accountable

Q: Explain how Congress uses it oversight power in its relationship with the executive branch

Q: Explain how the president ensures that executive branch agencies and departments carry out their responsibilities in concert with the goals of the administration

  • Congress with the Bureaucracy:

    • Congress is concerned that the bureaucratic agencies actually implement the laws as Congress intended

      • This is where oversight comes in, and gives Congress two ways to check the power of the Bureaucracy:

        1. Committee Hearings: Congress will call directors into committee to testify and give reports on their progress of carrying out the law

        2. Power of the Purse: Any agency cannot spend taxpayer money until they are authorized by Congress, who is responsible for the federal budget

  • President with the Bureaucracy:

    • The Bureaucracy officially falls under the authority of the President

    • The President has a policy agenda to implement, so if the bureaucracy isn’t cooperating with that agenda, the president can use both formal and informal powers to shake things up:

      1. Appointment (Formal): If the Bureaucracy isn’t behaving like the President would like, they can just appoint new heads the agencies who will usually be sympathetic to the President’s policy agenda

      2. Executive Order (Informal): Brings the Bureaucracy into line with the Presidential Policies

        • For example, Civil Rights was a large agenda item for Lyndon B. Johnson, so in 1964 he signed the Civil Rights Act into law, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, gender, or religion

          • If Discrimination did occur, the agencies responsible for enforcing it would only know about it AFTER the fact

          • As a result, Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, mandating that any contractors hired by the federal government had to take action to avoid discrimination but also to populate the organizations with women and minorities and other discriminated groups

  • Compliance Monitoring

    • Biggest slowdown in the Bureaucracy

    • When an agency imposes rules on an industry, they must go through laborious process of following up with the players of those industries to make sure they are complying

      • This takes a lot of time and work, so it greatly slows down the implementation of policies

  • Judicial Branch with the Bureaucracy

    • Since the rules and regulations by the Bureaucracy directly affects the citizens, people can appeal to the courts if they feel the rules/regulations is unconstitutional

      • This would be the Court exercises Judicial Review

      • Most of the time, the Court rules in favor of the agency, unless there is a blatant constitution violation

Unit 3 - Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

3.1 - The Bill of Rights

Q: Explain how the U.S. Constitution protects individual liberties and rights

  • The Bill of Rights (Constitution)

    • The Bill of Rights includes the first 10 amendments to the constitution designed to protect Civil Liberties

      • Civil Liberties are Constitutionally established guarantees and freedoms that protect citizens against arbitrary government interference

  • History of the Bill of Rights

    • The Federalists were in favor of a more powerful central government

    • The Anti-Federalists were in favor of more powerful states

      • This group said they would not sign or ratify the Constitution without a bill of rights to outline the specific liberties

    • James Madison wrote more than 10 amendments, but only 10 were included

  • The Amendments that make up the Bill of Rights:

    1. 1st Amendment: Protects the freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition

    2. Protect the right to keep and bear arms

    3. Protects citizens from having soldiers quartered in their homes

    4. Protects against unreasonable searches and seizure of persona property and effects

    5. Deals with the rights of citizens when they are accused of crimes

    6. Explains how the process will go when a person is accused of a crime and explains the protections to which they are entitled

    7. Guarantees the right to a trial by jury

    8. Protects against cruel and usual punishment and excessive bail

    9. Acknowledges that if there are other rights not mentioned in the first 10, this exclusion doesn’t mean that such rights are not protected

    10. Any powers not explicitly granted by the Constitution to the federal government belong exclusively to the states

    • The liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights protect citizens from intrusion by the federal government

    • It did not protect people from the STATE governments

      • With the passage of the 14th amendment, the bill of rights would be applied to the states; it wasn’t always like that

3.2 - The First Amendment: Freedom of Religion

Q: Explain how much the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment reflects a commitment to individual liberty

  • The First Amendment is not absolute

    • Balance is always between the religious practice of the majority and the free exercise of minority religious practice

  • Parts of the First Amendment

    • “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

      • The Establishment Clause prevents Congress from establishing a national church

      • The Free Exercise Clause protects the rights of citizens to practice their religion without interference from the Government

    • There is a “wall of separation” between the Church and the State according to Thomas Jefferson

  • The “Wall of Separation” being strengthened or weakened:

    • Thickening: The Johnson Amendment

      • This was attached to a 1954 tax bill by Lyndon Johnson which said that if churches receive tax-exempt status, then the pastor/priests of those churches cannot endorse political candidates

    • Weakening: Trump vowed to overturn the Johnson Amendment

      • He… doesn’t have the power to do this?

    • This shows a battle between how thick or thin the “wall of separation” should be

  • How the Supreme Court interpreted the Freedom Of Religion

    1. Engel v. Vitale - Establishment Clause

      • New York schools offered a short, voluntary non-sect prayer to be recited by schoolchildren at the beginning of each school day

      • The Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment

        • Thus, state-sponsored prayer in schools was unconstitutional, and it was justified by the idea of a “wall of separation” because no state government had any business writing prayers for students to use

      • This case is very much an example of the Supreme Court upholding individual religious liberty, especially to parents who rejected prayer in school (the free exercise of the minority)

    2. Wisconsin v. Yoder - Free Exercise Clause

      • A group of Amish parents, did not want to send their children to school even though Wisconsin required it

      • They wanted to pull their children out of school after the 8th grade to begin doing vocational training

        • These parents complained that the Wisconsin law violated the free exercise of the religion

      • The court issued that it was a violation of their right to free exercise, as the children might be exposed to influences that would be against the Amish community’s religious values if they stayed in school

      • This is another example of the court upholding the individual liberty of free exercise of religion

  • Exception

    • Employment Division v. Smith

      • Here, the court ruled against free exercise of two men who had used hallucinatory drugs as apart of a Native American church ritual

      • This shows that none of our liberties are absolute, and there are limits, as the Court ruled that the free exercise clause could be restricted if that practice was otherwise illegal

3.3 - The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech

Q: Explain how much the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 1st Amendment reflects a commitment to individual liberty

  • Free Speech

    • It is NOT absolute, so you can’t just say whatever you want at any place or at any time

  • Symbolic Speech in Tinker v. Des Moines

    • Students in Iowa planned to wear black arm bands to school in protest of the Vietnam War

      • The Administration heard plans of this protest taking place, and tried to stop it from taking place because they claimed it would disrupt the learning environment

    • Division over the Vietnam War was intense back in those days, and protests plus violence had broken out in University Campuses

    • Students claimed that not be able to protest by wearing the armbands violated their free speech

      • The free speech was symbolic in this case because they wore black armbands

    • The Supreme Court agreed with the students that their first amendment rights had been violated

      • While the Court acknowledged that school administrators have an obligation to keep the peace in their schools, there was no actual disruption but only the fear of it

    • As a result, the right to symbolic speech was upheld

    • With this decision, the Court is attempting to balance individual freedom and social order

  • How does the court decide?

    1. Time, place, and manner regulations

      • There are Content-neutral regulations

        • This means that they don’t restrict the actual words being said, only when and where and how

    2. Defamatory, Offensive, and Obscene

      • Defamation is almost never protected speech

      • Offensive or obscene language is difficult to define since it’s a moving target

      • There is a high bar to reach for the government to silence speech deemed offensive

    3. Clear and present Danger Rule

      • Speech can be silenced if it is deemed dangerous in some way

  • Dangerous speech in Schenk v. United States:

    • Schenk was a socialist who was not a fan of American involvement in WW1, so he made and distributed pamphlets urging people to skip the draft

      • He was arrested for violating the espionage act, which made it illegal to criticize the government

    • The Court ruled that his conviction was constitutional, because no violating of his first amendment right to free speech had occurred

      • This is because the Pamphlets incited unlawful action, and this speech created a clear and present danger to American society

      • On another note, the clear and present danger test is no longer the standard for protecting 1st amendment speech rights,

        • it was changed in the 1960s with the Brandenburg Test that actually made it harder for the government to censor the kind of speech Schenk was prosecuted for

3.4 - The First Amendment: Freedom of the Press

Q: Explain how much the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 1st Amendment reflects a commitment to individual liberty

  • Freedom of the Press is one of the keystones to a free society

    • When the power to govern is in the hands of the people, a free press is necessary in order to report to us what our elected officials are doing so that we can keep them accountable

    • However, it is NOT absolute so it must be balanced with other liberties

      • For example, we must balance the right to a free press with the 6th amendment right to a fair trial

        • This may keep certain details out of the press

  • When does the concern for national security necessitate the silence of the press?

    • Prior Restraint: When the government tries to restrain a story prior to its publication

    • The standard for prior restraint has been set very high by the Supreme Court

  • New York Times v. United States

    • A stack of classified documents known as the pentagon papers were leaked to the NYT and the Washington Post

      • These papers made it abundantly clear that the President had lied to the people and Congress about the Vietnam War

    • Nixon invoked Prior Restrain on the publication of these documents on account for the protection of our national security

    • The Court ruled that freedom of the press was more important than Nixon’s vague claim about national security, and a “heavy presumption against prior restraint” was made

      • In other words, if the Government wants to censor the press it must have an incredibly clear reason to do so

3.5 - The Second Amendment: The Right to Bear Arms

Q: Explain how much the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 2nd Amendment reflects a commitment to individual liberty

  • Language of the Second Amendment

    • “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”

      • A lot of people in favor of gun control have argued that the people’s right to keep and bear arms is clearly in the context of being a member of a “well regulated Militia”

        • State Constitutions before the ratification of the Constitution mentioned the right to bear arms clearly in the context of a Militia

      • However, now that we have such a large military and police system and no need of state militias, does the second amendment’s right to bear arms still apply?

  • The Court ruling on the 2nd Amendment:

    • District of Columbia v. Heller

      • In Washington DC, it was virtually impossible to own a gun, so Heller sued for his 2nd amendment rights

        • The court sided with Heller

          Even though the Second Amendment mentions the right to bear arms in the context of militias, that doesn’t diminish the operative phrase of the amendment, which is the right to keep and bear arms

    • McDonald v. Chicago

      • Applied the Heller decision and its commitment to individual liberty for gun ownership to the states

    • This shows the that Supreme Court has consistently upheld and individual right to own a gun

3.6 - Individual Freedom vs Public Safety: 2nd, 4th, 8th Amendments

Q: Explain how the Supreme Court has attempted to balance claims of individual freedom with laws and enforcement procedures that promote public order and safety

  • Reminder

    • No of our rights are absolute, so when the Supreme Court takes up the task of interpreting the amendments they are always trying to figure out whether an individual’s freedom should be upheld or whether public safety and order is more important

  • 8th Amendment

    • “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted

      • In recent years, the 8th amendment has been under debate in regards to the death penalty being cruel and unusual punishment or not

      • The 5th amendment stipulates that “No person shall be…deprived of life…without due process of law.”

        • On the surface, the death penalty wouldn’t necessarily be unconstitutional because someone COULD be deprived of their life as long as due process of the law was followed

      • For example, in Furman v Georgia the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional (Individual Freedom)

        • It was deemed so because you are more likely to be put to death for murdering a white person than a black person

          • The unequal application of the death penalty is why it was deemed “cruel and unusual”

      • Four years later, the court decided differently in Gregg v. Georgia (Social Order)

        • Georgia and other states rewrote their death penalty laws to address the previous stipulation with the death penalty

        • The court found that the death penalty in and of itself was not a violation of 8th amendment, because extreme crimes were required to be put to death

          • As a result, the court reasoned that the death penalty would serve as a preventive for citizens committing those extreme crimes

      • Some people argue that there is no humane way to execute someone

        • In some cases people were set on fire from the electric chair or lay in agony from lethal injection

      • In conclusion, you can see the debate between these two cases in individual freedom and social order

  • 2nd Amendment

    • At various times and various places, laws have been put into place which open up people’s right to own guns, or seek to constrict those rights

      • This debate over laws gets especially loud during a mass shooting, where tensions rise between interest groups trying to restrict gun rights and other interest groups trying to advance gun rights

  • 4th Amendment

    • Protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures of property

    • Warrants must be secured before entering a person’s home

      • Only issues by courts when probable cause is well established

    • After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush initiated by executive order a program that allowed the federal government to work with 3rd party cell phone carriers to search for leads on suspected terrorists

      • They did this by mining metadata, which is everything about how a person communicates minus the actual conversation

      • This was deemed necessary to uphold public safety because the country just suffered a massive terrorist attack

        • People still fought back because they thought it was a gross governmental overreach

3.7 - Selective Incorporation

Q: Explains the implications of the doctrine of selective incorporation

  • What is Selective Incorporation?

    • The process by which the Bill of Rights is applied to the states

      • The bill of rights beings the first 10 amendments, which lay out our civil liberties which we are entitled to as citizens

      • If a court case comes up which applies one of the first 10 amendments to the states, that process is known as selective incorporation

  • The 14th Amendment

    • “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…”

  • The Supreme Court and Selective Incorporation:

    1. Reynolds v. United States

      • A man named Reynolds in Utah had many wives, and though the state had outlawed polygamy Reynolds argued that his religion required him to have many wives

        • Furthermore, the Utah government needed to stay out of it because of Reynolds’ right to the free exercise of religion (1st amendment)

      • The Supreme Court did not agree with Reynolds, because while the state government could not legislate against the belief of polygamy, they COULD legislate against the PRACTICE of it

        • This is an example of the Supreme Court upholding a state law and the process of selective incorporation

    2. McDonald v. Chicago

      • Chicago had a law requiring all guns to be registered, but the city had rejected all registration of those guns since the early 80s

      • It was argued that if the Court ruled that the Second Amendment allowed citizens of Washington D.C. (DC v. Heller - 3.5) to own handguns, that should also be the case for the states

        • The court agreed, but narrowly in a 5-4 decision

        • As a result, the 2nd amendment was incorporated into the states

  • What is the “Selective” part talking about?

    • The first ten amendments were not wholly applied to the states

      • So far, the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendment have been selectively incorporated to the states through various SCOTUS decisions so far

3.8 - Due Process and the Rights of the Accused

Q: Explain how much states are limited by the due process clause from infringing upon individual rights

  • “Due Process of Law”

    • This comes from the 5th amendment, where “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

      • This means a judge can’t just throw you in jail

    • Every citizen of the United States entitled to the due process of law whenever that governments seeks to infringe upon the life, liberty, or property of someone

  • 5th Amendment vs 14th Amendment

    • The 5th amendment speaks about due process in regards to the FEDERAL government, while the 14th amendment applies due process to the STATES

  • 4th Amendment

    • “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

    • In Weeks v. United States, the Supreme Court established the exclusionary rule

      • This means that any evidence that’s gathered in violation of the 4th amendment (without a proper warrant for the search) will be excluded from a person’s trial

    • Mapp v. Ohio incorporated the 4th amendment’s exclusionary rule to the states

      • In this case, police officers got a warrant to search Mapp’s house for gambling paraphernalia

      • They did not find anything gambling related, but instead found obscene magazines which were illegal then

      • The Supreme Court ruled that since the warrant didn’t have the obscene materials in it, they could not stand as evidence against her

    • The Patriot Act allowed the government to search through citizen’s metadata (see 3.6)

    • In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court found that searching through cell phones had to have a warrant

      • In this case, police searched through someone’s phone after pulling them over for an expired license tag

      • They saw guns in the car so let themselves search the phone

  • 5th Amendment

    • Miranda v. Arizona incorporated the 5th amendment into the states

      • This case established the Miranda Rule, “You have the right to remain silent, etc. etc…”

    • This now applied the 5th amendment protection against being a witness in your own incrimination to a person being held in STATE custody, not just federal custody

    • However, subsequent cases established the Public Safety Exception

      • If an officer was acting in the name of public safety before reading the Miranda rights, that will not necessarily exclude evidence from court SO LONG as the action was taken in defense of public safety

  • 6th Amendment

    • “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right… to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

      • In other words, you have a right to a lawyer

    • Gideon v. Wainwright incorporated this amendment to the states

      • The defendant, Gideon, was arrested and tried in a Florida court

        • The state did not provide Gideon with a lawyer, and he was convicted

      • The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gideon, and incorporated the 6th amendment’s right to a lawyer to the states

3.9 - Due Process and the Right to Privacy

Q: Explain how much states are limited by the due process clause from infringing upon individual rights

  • Reminder

    • The Process of Selective Incorporation is done with the 14th amendment’s Equal Protection Clause

    • “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States… nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

      • This amendment mandates that civil liberties are protected from state intrusion

  • The Right to Privacy

    • Nowhere in the constitution does it say that Americans have the right to privacy

    • The Court established the right to privacy as an implicit right based on:

      • 1st Amendment

      • 4th Amendment

      • 5th Amendment

      • 9th Amendment

      • 14th Amendment

    • There are rights explicitly stated (enumerated rights) because the light is cast on them for all to see

      • However, these rights casts SHADOWS that demonstrate the zones of privacy that correspond to the enumerated rights

      • For example, the 1st amendment protect a person’s right to the freedom of speech, but it also means that the state has no business to tell someone what they can or can’t read/watch in their own home

3.10 - Social Movements and Equal Protection

Q: Explain how constitutional provisions have supported and motivated social movements

  • Civil Liberties v. Civil Rights

    • Civil Liberties are rights guaranteed to every American citizen by the Constitution

    • Civil Rights Movements ensure that every American, regardless of sex, religion, or race has equal access to those civil liberties

      • Civil rights activists have attempted to apply those rights to everyone through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment

      • Automatically connect Civil Rights with the 14th Amendment!!

  • Civil Rights Movement

    • After the end of reconstruction in 1877, Southern States very much referred back to the old racial hierarchy and oppression that characterized the south beforehand

      • Southern States found ways to oppress black people with rules such as black codes and jim crow laws

    • In the 1950s, a formal movement began to emerge, one of the key leaders of course being MLK

      • There were also more militant groups such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers

  • Letter From a Birmingham Jail

    • MLK was arrested after protesting

    • After this protest, white clergymen wrote a letter saying black people shouldn’t be marching around like that

      • Instead, they should wait for sympathetic white people to take up their cause of civil rights for them

    • King’s letter was a response: “Only those who have not been under the degrading lash of racism can rightly say ‘wait.’ The time for action is now and while racist laws must be fought in court they must also be protested on the streets. Only in that way can they force the white majority to confront their racism and enter into a dialogue about long-term change.”

3.11-3.12 - Balancing Majority and Minority Rights

Q: Explain how the government has responded to social movements

Q: Explain how the Supreme Court has at times allowed the restriction of the civil rights of minority groups and at other times has protected those rights

  • Civil Rights Movement in the Court

    • Wanted to abolish segregation in society

    • Racial segregation had been made the law with Plessy v. Ferguson

      • This ruled that racial segregation was constitutional as long as the various facilities for black people and white people were equal

      • This is an example of the Court restricting the civil rights of minority groups

    • Brown v. Board of Education addressed the inequity in the school system

      • This overturned “separate but equal” doctrine and ordered that schools be integrated

      • The court ruled that racial separation is inherently unequal, no matter the state of the various facilities and staff

        • Based on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause

      • This is an example of the court upholding equal rights

  • Civil Rights Movements in Congress

    • Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the basis of race

    • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it illegal to discriminate against voters

      • Both of these laws upheld the equal status of black americans

    • The 24th Amendment officially outlawed poll taxes

    • Title IX(9) guaranteed that discrimination in federally funded programs could not happen on the basis of sex as well as race

3.13 - Affirmative Action

Q: Explain how the Supreme Court has at times allowed the restriction of the civil rights of minority groups and at other times has protected those rights

  • Affirmative Action

    • Describes policies enacted that favor groups that have been historically discriminated against

    • Question: Is is constitutional to have minority quotas in various institutions?

      • This was ruled against in Regents v. Bakke, where race couldn’t be the only factor in college admissions

    • Question: Is the constitution colorblind?

      • Justices disagree about this one..

    • De Jure Segregation: racial discrimination by law

      • Ruled against this in Brown v. Board of Education, dismantling the legal structure that supported racial segregation

    • De Facto Segregation: racial segregation by personal choice

      • For example, white flight out of the suburbs in the north where black families were moving in during the Great Migration

Unit 4

4.1 - American Attitudes About Government & Politics

Q: Explain the relationship between core beliefs of U.S. citizens and attitudes about the role of government

  • Core Beliefs of (typically) All Americans

    1. Individualism: Places emphasis on self-reliance and independence

      • Americans in general are less community-oriented when compared to eastern cultures which put community above the individual

    2. Equality of Opportunity: Every American, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, religion, etc. deserves equal footing to go after life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

      • We believe that there shouldn’t be special classes or hierarchies amongst us

    3. Free Enterprise: Laissez-faire economics, or as little government intervention in economy as possible

    4. Rule of Law: Every citizen is equal under the law, and no one has special privileges

    5. Limited Government: A government whose limits are well-defined and is restrained through the seperations of powers and a system of checks and balances

  • Competing Interpretations of Core Beliefs

    • Conservatives are those who cherish established institutions and seek to preserve them for the good of society

      • They tend to emphasize smaller government to provide fewer services to the public

    • Liberals push for new reforms in order to make society more just and equitable

      • For example, liberal ideology is seen with the Women’s Rights movement, who advocated for equal pay to men

  • Individualism

    • Conservatives value self-centered individualism

      • This means that they emphasize the interests of the individual above the interests of society

    • Liberals value enlightened individualism

      • This means the they emphasize the interests of society above the interests of the individual

      • For example, Lyndon B. Johnson created the war on poverty which conservatives hated because it took taxpayer money and distributed it to the impoverished

        • Liberals liked it because they believed the government should take care of its poor even if it’s at the expense of those who have more

  • Equality of Opportunity

    • Conservatives believe in the power of meritocracy

      • This means everyone rises of America based on their own toil and sweat

    • Liberals agree with the idea of a meritocracy with condition

      • They believe that not all groups start that climb in the same place

  • Free Enterprise

    • Conservatives want the government to stay out of the affairs of businesses and allow the free market to determine what’s best

    • Liberals want the government to intervene with appropriate regulations to ensure safety and quality in the workplace

  • Rule of Law

    • Conservatives see the laws themselves as embodying equality

      • Emphasize the letter of the law

    • Liberals agree the laws embody equality with condition

      • Emphasize the unequal application of laws in regards to minority groups

  • Limited Government

    • Conservatives want to define strong boundaries of federalism

      • Less government interference in people’s lives

    • Liberals embrace the need for government intervention in society

      • This is for the sake of the greater good

4.2 - Political Socialization

Q: Explain how cultural factors influence political attitudes and socialization

  • Political Socialization

    • This is the process in how we get our political opinions:

      • Family: Children will often hold the same/similar political beliefs as their parents (it’s the biggest)

      • Schools

      • Peers

      • Media

      • Civic/Religious Organizations

      • Globalization

4.3 - Changes in Ideology

Q: Explain how cultural factors influence political attitudes and socialization

  • Generational effects

    • Generational effects: A person’s voting behavior and political ideology is very much influenced by the generation into which they were born

      1. Silent Generation (Born before 1945): Grew up during the Great Depression and WW2, and were young adults during the age of conformity in the 1950s

        • They have a high value on religious beliefs and church attendance

        • These people are generally conservative, so they weren’t particularly fond of counterculture movements

        • Supported foreign intervention by the US to stop the spread of communism, notably in Vietnam

        • They tend to support candidates who are tough on crime and terrorists, which is generally a conservative position

      2. Baby Boomers (Born after WW2)

        • This is a huge generation, and as they grew up in the chaotic ‘60s, they appreciated the change more than their parents

        • They are slightly more liberal, but still mostly conservative

      3. Generation X (Mid 60s to 1980s)

        • Were the first to really use the internet

        • They are slightly more liberal than their boomer parents partly because they are more ethnically diverse than either of the two previous generations

      4. Millennials (1981-1996)

        • More liberal than any other group

        • About 40% of this group is not white

    • Each group gets more and more liberal

  • Life-cycle effects

    • Whatever stage a person in life is (young, middle-age, old), it affects their political beliefs and behaviors

    • In conclusion, political socialization happens as a result of your generational membership and it can change over time depending on what stage in life you are

4.4 - The Influence of Political Events on Ideology

Q: Explain how cultural factors influence political attitudes and socialization

  • “Political Events”

    • Any event deemed significant during the life of our nation

      • These events shape our political beliefs

        1. Silent Generation: Watching the government step in with many programs during the Great Depression and defending themselves during WW2

          • This led them to overall trust the government to intervene for their safety and well-being, which in turn affected how they voted

        2. Baby Boomers: Saw how the government handled the Vietnam War, so trust in government went down as the Pentagon Papers showed how the government had been lying about the progress of the war. They also witnessed Nixon resigning.

          • This led them to shift to the Republican Party with Regan

        3. Millennials: 9/11 Terrorist Attacks demonstrated to them that this was the result of over-intervention by the US for decades in the middle east

          • As a result, Millennials have a keen sense for foreign policy

    • These events simply affect how we are politically socialized to the country that surrounds us

4.5 - Measuring Public Opinions

Q: Describe the elements of a scientific poll

  • Scientific Poll

    • A scientific poll is the best tool for measuring public opinion

    • Scientific Polls consist of…

      1. Writing questions that are as free from bias as possible

      2. Presenting questions to a small, randomized group of people

      3. Generalizing results to the larger population

  • Types of Polls

    1. Opinion Poll: Helps get a feel for the public’s opinion of a certain topic of discerning people’s feeling on certain candidates or policies

    2. Benchmark Poll: Taken at the beginning of a candidate’s run and gives the campaign a benchmark against which they can compare future polls to see how the candidate is faring

    3. Tracking Poll: Conducted over time, usually with the same group of people, gives information on how the groups feels about a given issue

    4. Entrance/Exit Poll: Conducted at voting sites that ask people how they voted

  • Sampling Techniques

    • Pollsters always measure public opinion by means of a sample

      • This sample needs to be representative, meaning that it has to have the same characteristics as the larger population it’s measuring

    • There’s a chance for a sampling error, meaning that the sample will not exactly represent the general population

      • In general, a plus or minus 3 sampling error is considered a good and representative poll

    • Mass Survey: A questionnaire that can be given to as many people as possible

      • Can only measure quantitative data

    • Focus Group: Pollsters measure the opinion of a small group of people

      • Better for collecting qualitative data (how people feel and think)

4.6 - Evaluating Public Opinion Data

Q: Explain the quality and credibility of claims based on public opinion data

  • Public Opinion affects elections and the outcomes of policy debates

    • Based on public opinion, legislators know how much support that they have for certain pieces of legislation and can appeal to actual desires

    • Bandwagon effect: People are more likely to get behind a candidate who is polling well because people don’t want to back a loser

  • Poll Reliability:

    • The relationship between public opinion polls and elections and policy debates can be affected by how people view the reliability of those opinion polls

    • However, polling blunders can still happen

      • In 2016, Clinton was a shoe-in for president according to pollsters but Trump won

    • Social Desirability Bias: People fill out surveys and give a socially desirable answer, even if they don’t follow through with it

    • Non-Response Bias: Certain groups are more likely to respond to public opinion polls than others

    • Some people don’t understand the difference between scientific and nonscientific polls and it can affect how they trust polling numbers

4.7 - Ideologies of Political Parties

Q: Explain how ideologies of the two major parties shape policy debates

  • Political Ideology

    • An interlocking set of ideas that form the basis for political decision making

    • Conservative ideology emphasizes traditional social structures and existing structures of authority

      • Wants limited government in public affairs

      • Strong stances on crime and punishment

      • Champions states’ rights above federal power

    • Liberal ideology emphasizes civil rights for the marginalized and supports the efforts of social justice movements to ensure everyone has equal access to civil liberties

      • Wants government involvement in public affairs, such as caring for the poor and shaping regulations for businesses

      • Also care for intervention in the economy

    • Party Platform: A set of goals published by a political party which tells you the type of legislation they would pursue should their candidate win an election

  • Republican Party

    • GOP (Grand Old Party)

    • Most closely aligns with conservative ideology

    • “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”

  • Democratic Party

    • Most closely aligns with liberal ideology

    • “it is broke, so let’s protest and fix it”

4.8 - Ideology and Policy Making

Q: Explain how U.S. political culture (e.g., values, attitudes, and beliefs) influences the formation, goals, and implementation of public policy over time

  • How do parties get laws passed?

    • Laws that are passed only reflect the beliefs of people who actually vote

  • For example, English as an officially language

    • Conservatives try to support such a policy in Congress but every year it dies

    • They believe it will unite Americans of all backgrounds, and it will save billions in federal and state spending

      • Hospitals have to provide translators, schools must hire bilingual staff, and some states spend millions printing ballots in several languages

    • Liberals reject the idea of English as the official language

      • See it as a tool of oppression, and in some cases, racist

        • Requiring immigrants to learn English at the expense of their native language is tantamount to an erasure of their cultural heritage

  • Ideology and Law

    • Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act

      • Addressed welfare policies, as it limited welfare payments to 5 years and the result was the number of those on welfare dropped

      • This was a win to conservatives, because it reasserted the American Work Ethic

    • DREAM Act

      • Deals with minors who immigrated illegally with their parents; the children had no choice in the manner

      • This act created a situation where these children would not be deported but would be given a chance at citizenship

        • This was more favored by liberal democrats

        • It never passed

4.9 - Ideology and Economic Policy

Q: Describe different political ideologies on the role of government in regulating the marketplace

  • Economic Policy

    1. Fiscal Policy: Decisions the government makes about government spending and taxation

    2. Monetary Policy: Decisions the government makes about how much money should be in the economy

      • Under the control of the Federal Reserve, who buys/sells government bonds and sets reserve requirements

  • Liberals on Economic Policy

    • Tend to favor the most intervention in the economy

    • Government spending is what keeps the economy strong

    • They are big spenders on fiscal policy, which come from the idea of Keynesian Economics

      • This is an economic theory which wants programs put in place now instead of waiting for any economic downturn to simply fix itself in the long run

      • FDR utilized this theory by increasing the amount of federal spending which went into programs to help people

    • Liberals tend to believe that monetary policy is too slow to effect real change

  • Conservatives on Economic Policy

    • Want less government intervention in the economy

    • They want less government programs and lower taxes

    • This is backed by the idea of Supply-Side Economics

      • If more goods are put into the economy, it will reduce any economic turmoil as businesses produce goods

    • Conservatives think that monetary policy is the best way to stabilize the economy

  • Libertarian Ideology

    • Want the least amount of government intervention possible

    • They believe, economically speaking, that the government is only good for protecting property rights and that nothing hinders voluntary trade

    • No regulation on businesses and minimal government programs

4.10 - Ideology and Social Policy

Q: Explain how political ideologies vary on the role of government in addressing social issues

Q: Explain how different ideologies impact policy on social issues

  • Libertarian Ideology

    • Don’t want government influence on social issues

    • Conservative on economic issues, but liberal with social issues

  • Liberal Ideology

    • Some social issues should be dictated by the government, such as marriage being between whoever you want

  • Conservative Ideology

    • Some social issues should also be dictated by the government, such as marriage being between one man and one woman

Unit 5

5.1 - Voting Rights and Models of Voting Behavior

Q: Describe the voting rights protections in the Constitution and in legislation

Q: Describe different models of voting behavior

  • Who has this right to vote?

    • This is known as the franchise

    • Article I, Section IV: “The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations.”

      • In other words, Congress doesn’t say who has the right to vote, as it was left up to the states

      • At the time (1789) the states had decided that white men who owned land could vote

    • In the beginning, only wealthy, landed white men had the franchise

      • At the time, states believed that men with property were the only ones who had a true stake in the betterment of society; they would vote for the best interests in society

      • Of course, this changed at time went on

    • After the civil war, a set of amendments recognized the right to vote for more people:

      • 15th Amendment: Recognized the right of black men to vote

      • 17th Amendment: Granted the people the right to vote senators into office

      • 23rd Amendment: Granted DC the right to vote

      • 19th Amendment: Recognized women’s right to vote

      • 24th Amendment: Abolished poll taxes which were used to suppress the minority vote

      • 26th Amendment: Lowered the voting age from 21 to 18

  • Barriers to vote

    • Some states still erect barriers to vote

      • Of course, these laws are constantly being challenged in courts

      • Some states have laws that ban convicted felons from voting

  • Voting Models

    • The way people vote

      1. Rational Choice Voting

        • Person votes based on their individual self-interest; carefully studies the issues and platforms

      2. Retrospective Voting

        • Person votes based on the recent track record of the politicians in question

      3. Prospective Voting

        • Person votes based on the predictions of how a party of candidate will perform in the future

      4. Party-Line Voting

        • Person votes for all the candidates of the voter’s party

5.2 - Voter Turnout

Q: Explain the roles that individual choice and state laws play in voter turnout in elections

  • Franchise

    • Or the right to vote, has been expanded to more and more people so almost all Americans have access to the voting booth

  • Voter Turnout

    1. Structural Barriers

      • A policy or law than can prevent people from voting

      • For example, voter I.D laws, where some states mandate government identification in order to get access to the voting booth

        • Republicans argue the ID laws decreased the possibility of voter fraud; a large amount of people without an ID will vote Democrat

        • Democrats point to a growing body of research that indicates voter fraud is not a serious threat and almost never happens; laws only serve to keep minorities out of the voting booth

    2. Political Efficacy

      • A citizens belief about whether their vote matters

        • If you are a Republican in a majority Democrat state, you may feel that your vote doesn’t matter

        • A politician’s performance may affect efficacy

          • If a scandalous president comes into office and acts up, you may not want to vote

    3. Demographics

      • Senior Citizens consistently vote in the highest number

        • With age, they have a better understanding of the issues at hand since they know the political system more

        • They have more of a stake with their financial investments or their health

      • 18-21 year olds are the least likely to

        • Maybe they don’t feel like they have a sense of what the issues are

        • They don’t know how to register?

    4. Type of Election

      • National Elections have more participation than state elections or midterm elections

        • However, with state or midterm elections, there are still more people voting than previous years due to the franchise being opened up

  • For those who do vote, what factors affect their choices?

    1. Party Identification / Ideological Orientation

      • A registered Republican will probably vote Republican

    2. Candidate Characteristics

      • Some people just consider the candidate, like if the person seems likeable, trustworthy, and honest?

    3. Political Issues

      • For example, employer mask mandates were enacted by Democrats, and it might have led people to vote against democrats in the next election if they didn’t like those mandates

    4. Religious Beliefs / Gender / Race

      • This is why Trump aligned himself with white evangelical Christians

        • This group is a powerful voting block, which means they often vote in the same way

5.3 - Political Parties

Q: Describe linkage institutions

Q: Explain the function and impact of political parties on the electorate and government

  • Linkage Institutions

    • Societal structure that connects people to their government or the political process

    • We need mechanisms between us and our elected officials

    • They act as intermediaries between average people like you and me with the policymakers in the federal, state, and local governments

  • Types of Linkage Institutions

    1. Political Parties

    2. Interest Groups

    3. Elections

    4. Media

  • Political Party

    • An organization defined by a certain ideological belief that puts forward candidates for election

      • What do Political Parties do?

        1. Mobilization and education of voters

          • Can drive people to the polls who cannot otherwise drive themselves

          • They do this by calling, emailing, showing up to your doorstep

          • A Canvassing Campaign is where a huge army of volunteers calls people or shows up at people’s doorstep with the goal of persuading people to vote for their candidate

        2. Write and publish the party platform

          • A formal set of policy/agenda goals written and endorsed by the party

          • The party platform lists the kind of policies the party will enact if their candidates is elected

        3. Find quality candidates

          • Someone who will actually win

        4. Provide campaign management support for their candidates

          • Fundraisers, Implementing targeted voting strategies

          • As a result, political parties play a huge role in linking people to the political process

5.4 - How and Why Political Parties Change

Q: Explain why and how political parties change and adapt

  • How Parties Change

    • It changes in the way parties interact with candidates

      • PAST: The party mattered and the candidate was secondary

      • PRESENT: The candidate matters and the party is secondary

      • New Media technology plays a big role in this, because it allows candidates to speak directly to their supporters and gather a following around them

        • As a result, it weakens the party’s role in nominating candidates

      • Candidates can shed light on underrepensted issues, which political scientists argue that even if the candidate doesn’t win the nomination, their followers are still likely to engage in the political process of voting and supporting the winner candidate

    • Parties have changed their platforms over time in order to appeal to a larger swath of the electorate

      • This is especially true with coalitions of voters, which is a demographic group (Millennials, Retired people, Evangelical Christians, etc.)

        • If they vote as a block, they can significantly alter the outcome of the election

      • The topics that candidates choose to talk about say a lot about the coalitions that they are trying to appeal to

    • Parties have altered the entire party structure

      1. Party Realignment - The Party realigns itself based off a election/series of elections where the party is badly defeated

      2. Campaign Finance Laws

        • Since the 1970s, laws and Supreme Court decisions have changed how much money can lawfully be given to candidates and parties

      3. Communication and Data-Management Technology

        • As technology has advanced, so has the party’s ability to mine data on certain groups and win elections. They utilize demographics and psychographics to target certain people with emails, text messages, etc.

        • Demographics: Classify people according to external traits: race, gender, age, and region

        • Psychographics: Classify people according to their inner life: personality, attitudes, aspirations, desires

5.5 - Third Party Politics

Q: Explain how structural barriers impact third-party and independent candidate success

  • We have a 2 party system in America

    • It’s almost impossible for a third-party candidate to win

  • Why can’t Third Parties win?

    1. Winner-take-all voting districts

      • For example, all 16 of Georgia electoral college votes go towards a Democrat even if they only won by one vote

        • A third party candidate will fail because of the most Americans find themselves in agreement with Republicans or Democrats, and are more likely to vote with the major party

        • They don’t feel like a third party candidate will even win, so they don’t want to waste their vote

    2. Incorporation of third party agendas into the two major parties’ platforms

      • A third-party is often called the “conscious of the nation” because they usually form around a narrower set of interests

        • Third-parties take on more extreme agendas and therefore have fewer supporters than the major parties

      • They can get the nation’s attention if they are well-funded, and if it turns out a lot of people like the third-party’s platform that issue can rise to prominence

        • The major party may adopt it into their own platform so they don’t lose voters

5.6 - Interest Groups Influencing Policy Making

Q: Explain the benefits and potential problems of interest-group influence on elections and policy making

Q: Explain how variation in types and resources of interest groups affects their ability to influence elections and policy making

  • Interest Group

    • A group of people who gather around a policy issues in order to persuade policy makers to pass legislation favorable to the group

    1. They educate voters and office holders on the interest groups chosen issue

      • Members of Interest Groups can become experts on a subject whereas representative may not have the resources or energy to do so

    2. They also engage in lobbying

      • They hold meetings with policy makers to try and influence them to pass legislation in their favor

    3. They also Draft legislation

    4. Mobilize its members to apply pressure on and work with legislators and government agencies

  • How do they do their work?

    • The Iron Triangle

      • The strong, mutually beneficial relationship between interest groups, congressional committees, and government agencies

      • Members of congressional committees are especially helped by interest groups

        • They provide the with policy information

        • They also provide campaign donations if the representative is sympathetic to the group’s goals

      • Interests groups can also be apart of Issue Networks, which is many different interest groups and even entities outside of interest groups come together to achieve a short-term policy goal

  • Factors that hinder or help an interest group

    1. The amount of activity in an interest group comes as a result of political and economic resources

      • The more political/economic resources you have, the more activity you can do and vice versa

      • Policy makers are much more incentivized to take meetings with the well-funded interest groups

    2. Unequal access to decision makers

      • It’s harder to get access to policymakers when you don’t have a lot of resources

    3. Freerider problem

      • When a larger group benefits from the efforts of interest group than are members of the group

5.7 - Groups Influencing Policy Outcomes

Q: Explain how various political actors influence policy outcomes

  • Groups that work policy changes

    1. Social Movements

      • For example, the prohibition movement that passed the prohibition amendment

      • There’s also the Civil Rights Movement

        • They used civil disobedience to get the attention of people to pass laws

    2. Protest Movements

      • Both of these movements often overlap

  • What is the importance of social and protest movements?

    • They get the nation’s attention on certain realities that need to be changed:

      • Interest groups step and draft potential legislation to present to lawmakers

        • When it comes to actually making laws, political parties and bureaucratic agencies get involved

        • When it comes time to implement and execute the law, bureaucratic agencies figure out the rules and regulations to accomplish that

          • When the law is in place, it will be implemented well or not

          • If not, social and protest movements work again

5.8 - Electing the President

Q: Explain how the different processes work in a U.S. presidential election

Q: Explain how the Electoral College facilitates and/or impedes democracy

  • Electing the President

    • To run for president, you first need to earn your party’s nomination, which happens through primary elections

      • These are elections in which members of a party vote on which candidate they want to represent them in the general election

      • They happen state-by-state, and different states handle primaries differently

    • Some states hold open primaries

      • Any registered voter can vote in either party’s primary, but not both

    • Some states hold closed primaries

      • Only people registered with the party can vote in those primaries

    • Some states have caucuses in order to nominate their party’s candidate

      • A caucus is a public area where members discuss and debate and then vote publicly

    • If a candidate wins the primary, they are presented as such at the party’s National Convention

      • It’s a really big party (celebration) where the winning candidate announces their VP pick, and it marks the start of the general election

  • Incumbent

    • The sitting (current) president

    • Almost always has the advantage over the challenger, which is known as the incumbency advantage

      1. Already won an election, so they know how it’s done

      2. The incumbent is a known quantity

        • People already know how they’ll act as president

      3. The incumbent already has an army of volunteers and fundraisers ready to help with another campaign

    • However, this does not guarantee victory (see 2020 election)

  • Electoral College

    • We aren’t actually electing the president, but we are electing ELECTORS who will vote for the president on our behalf

      • This is known as the electoral college

    • The framers weren’t exactly fans of participatory democracy, especially when it came to electing someone like the president

    • The numbers of electors per state is the amount of House representative plus the two Senators

    • Whoever wins the popular vote in the state gets all the electoral college votes

      • This is known as the winner-take-all system

    • You need 270 electoral votes to win

    • Candidates focus a lot of attention on swing states

5.9 - Congressional Elections

Q: Explain how the different processes work in U.S. congressional elections

  • Congressional Elections

    • Occur every two years

    • Members of the House of Representatives have two year terms

    • Senators have six year terms

      • 1/3 of them are up for reelection every two years

    • Midterm elections happen in the middle of a presidential term

  • Incumbency Advantage

    • In an election, the incumbent is the one who is already in office and is running for reelection

    • The incumbency advantage in Congress is even more pronounced than presidential elections

      • 90% of incumbents win their elections

    • They have Name Recognition

    • They have a Track Record

    • Established Funding

    • Safe Districts - House Representative have gerrymandered their districts in order to ensure reelection

5.10 - Modern Political Campaigns

Q: Explain how campaign organizations and strategies affect the elections process

  • Political Fundraising

    • There is a GIANT increase in how much money candidates spend on an election

  • Why are campaigns so expensive?

    • Lengths of the election cycle has increased

    • Complexity of Campaigns

      • Modern campaigns required professional consultants to run them, such as hiring a campaign manage, a public relations expert, dedicated fundraisers, social media consultants

      • They rely a lot on social media now

    • Advertising is a big chunk of expenses

5.11 - Campaign Finance

Q: Explain how the organization, finance, and strategies of national political campaigns affect the election process

  • The role of money in campaigns

    • Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA)

      • This Created a new federal commission called the Federal Election Commission (FEC)

      • The FEC was created to oversee and regulate the money being spent in political campaigns

        • Established limits for how much money a person could give to a political candidate, and how much money candidates could spend on their campaign

    • Hard money: Contributions given directly to a candidate

    • Soft money: Money donated to a party or interest group who can buy advertising on the candidate’s behalf

      • Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act: This law increased the amount of hard money that could be donated, and made regulations to make it more transparent of how much soft money was being donated

  • Citizens United v. FEC

    • Buckley v. Valeo

      • Court ruled limits on individual and corporate contributions to campaigns were constitutional

      • Court ruled that limits on how much a campaign can spend were unconstitutional

    • Citizens United v. FEC challenged the limitations placed on individuals and corporations

      • Court ruled that limits on contributions from individuals and corporations was a violation of free speech (1st Amendment)

      • Corporate funding of ads and broadcasts cannot be limited

        • Political spending by corporations, associations, and labor unions is a form of protected speech under the first amendment

  • Political Action Committee

    • Organizations that raise money for the sake of influencing the population to vote for their preferred candidate

      1. Connected PAC:

        • Formed by corporations or other entities like labor unions, and the only collect funds from the members of their organization

        • Money can be donated directly to candidates in limited quantities, but it can raise unlimited amounts of money provided the individual limits are obeyed

      2. Non-connected PAC

        • Formed independently of an organization, usually around a specific public interest, and donations to non=connected PACS are limited by law

        • It can accept donations from the public and donate directly to candidates

      3. Super PAC

        • Can be formed by anyone, and can accept unlimited donations but it cannot directly coordinate with a candidate

    • Campaign finance has been largely contested over the past 50 years

5.12 - The Media

Q: Explain the media’s role as a linkage institution

  • What’s a linkage institution again?

    • A societal structure that connects people to their government of the political process

    • Includes Political parties, interest groups, elections, and the media

  • The role of Media

    • The media acts as a watchdog agency, which means that it holds the government accountable and responsible to the people

      • This is why the framers of the constitution granted freedom of the press

    • It went from newspapers > telegraph > radio > television > internet > social media

      • FDR exploited the radio with his Fireside Chats, in which he would explain his administrators policies in bite-sized chunks so the average american could understand them

      • Social Media has changed the way Americans consume news more than anything else that came before it

        • The public is a part of the news process now

        • Participation comes more through sharing than contributing news themselves

        • The individual ends up deciding what news they want to consume and what news they want to avoid

  • News Reporting:

    1. News Events

      • Anything newsworthy, like the Hindenburg exploded or Mt. St. Helen erupted

    2. Investigative Journalism

      • Long-form news which seeks to expose corruption in the government and society

        • For example muckrakers during the progressive era (1920s) who exposed corruption

    3. Election Coverage / Political Commentary

      • We need to know who is running for office, and we need help interpreting their policies

      • This can lead to horse-race journalism, where news outlets can get really thirsty for polling numbers and publish them to the point of nausea

        • In other words, it’s news coverage of a candidate which just focuses on polling data and public perception of a candidate instead of their policy

5.13 - The Media

Q: Explain how increasingly diverse choices of media and communication outlets influence political institutions and behavior

  • The “Daily Me”

    • This means that our news is hyper-filtered to give us what we want to hear and never what we don’t want to hear

    • Media outlets have shifted the way they deliver their content

      • It’s increasingly narrow and increasingly partisan

  • Media Bias

    • It’s not new, and it’s unavoidable

      • However, with machine learning and algorithms, bias is becoming much more harder to detect

  • Also, consider the fact that almost all media platforms are for-profit companies, who are after money above all

  • How do we detect media bias?

    • Determine the ideological preference of the reporters themselves

      • Many studies show reporters usually lean Democratic

    • Examine the character of the reporting itself

      • Studies have found that liberal reporters display democratic politicians as bipartisan and always willing to compromise, while republican are betrayed as stubborn and unbending

      • On the other hand, conservative reporters tend to defend republican politicians as defenders of American values while democrats are portrayed as those who are unraveling and trampling American values

  • News and Social Media

    • A lot of people believe social media increases participation and activist causes

      • Remember that media is a linkage institution, so it gives access to participate in your government

    • However, you must consider that social media does not physically connect you with someone

      • Our networks are vast and shallow over social media, and the only activism such weak ties can inspire are causes that don’t really require many people

    • As a result, there is an ongoing debate about social media actually creating a positive change for society

Required Documents

The Declaration of Indepence

  • Preamble

    • Justification for why the American colonists are breaking up with Britain, as Jefferson writes his reasoning for a revolution

      • This document was published widely throughout the colonies and the western world

    • This document wanted to rally the troops at home and secure foreign allies

    • “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

      • Clear example of Natural Rights, which was a massive statement because Jefferson is saying their rights are given to them by their CREATOR, not a monarch or a government

        • The whole reason we have government is so that we can protect our natural rights

    • “That to secure these rights, Government are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from consent of the governed.

      • Government gets power from the people, which reflects the idea of Popular Sovereignty and the Social Contract

        • People are born with natural rights, because they are a human being so they consent to create a government to protect those rights

    • “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

      • This is what the colonists were trying to do after publishing this document by going to war

Federalist 10 = Factions

  • The Federalist Papers

    • During the ratification of the Constitution, some founding fathers publishes essays in a New York newspaper in order to convince the public to ratify

      • They addressed the most common objections to the new form of government and gave a sense of how the nation would work under this new constitution

  • Question in Federalist 10

    • James Madison attempts to answer this question: “How will the new Constitution protect the liberty of citizens against the tyranny of the majority?”

      • The Founding Fathers weren’t fans of pure democracy, because the majority would always win out against the minority; there is no protection for the minority

  • Factions

    • Madison begins by talking about the dangers of factions: “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

      • Factions, according the madison, are such a threat to liberty he uses the word “violence” to describe their actions

    • Factions, according to Madison, are a group of people who are united in some way by a common interest to put themselves first and cast their interests to their whole society (Kind of like a political party)

  • Solutions to the “violence of faction”

    1. “Removing its causes”

      • Stop the factions from forming

        • Madison thinks this is a terrible option, because that would destroy liberty since it is “essential to political life.”

          • Destroying liberty is worse than having factions in the first place

      • Also, Madison understands that all humans have different opinions, which is why factions are inevitable

    2. “Controlling its effects”

      • Limit their effects through a Republican style Government as opposed to a pure democracy

        • A representative democracy “opens a different prospect” and curtails the dangers of factions

      • As the nation gets larger, so does the amount of parties and interests

        • As a result, the power of these many factions is diluted by a large population; not one faction can dominante

        • All of these factions will be in competition, compromise is a necessity

Brutus no. 1 = No centralized Republic

  • Debate between Federalist 10 and Brutus no. 1

    • The federalist papers argued for the ratification of the constitution, while the anti-federalist papers argued against this

  • Questions in Brutus no. 1

    • Brutus tries to answer “is whether a confederated government be the best for the United States or not?”

      • A confederated government is the type of government the US had under the Articles of Confederation

    • Brutus also tried to answer if the US should just be one giant republic with one legislature, one executive, and judicial

    • Brutus argues that a confederacy is the best form of government and argues against a strong central government that the Constitution wants

  • Arguments for Brutus no. 1

    • “Necessary and Proper Clause” in Article I section 8 of the Constitution

      • This clause stipulates that the government can create laws to help carry out the enumerated powers in the constitution

    • “Supremacy Clause” in Article 6

      • Federal laws have greater authority than state laws

    • Brutus thinks these clauses eliminate any need for state governments, and any power meant for the states would be eliminated

      • For example, Brutus thinks that taxes can only be collected in small amounts by the government because citizens can become weary of large taxes and overthrow the government

      • If taxes are just collected by the government the states will just die off

      • He also makes this example with federal courts overriding state courts, which would eventually render states obsolete

    • Lastly, Brutus argues that the size of the nation will not suit a style of republic, because representatives will not be able to meet the needs of the large amount of people they represent

Articles of Confederation = Didn’t work

  • What is that?

    • The first constitution of the United States

    • A confederation is a form of government in which several powers unite to form a central power

      • These articles presented more powers to the states at the expense of the federal government; the states are supreme

  • What it included

    • One branch: Legislative

      • There was no president or federal court

    • Each state got one vote in Congress

    • They had a centralized government in order to do business with other nations

    • Each state supply a militia “ready for use”

    • Can’t declare war unless 9 other states agree

    • Amendments had to be agreed upon by every state

      • Of course, these led to problems and a new constitution was created

The U.S. Constitution

  • Established a Republican Government

    • The people elect representatives

  • Structure

    • Begins with a Preamble followed by seven articles

      1. Article I: The Legislative Branch

        • The form and powers of Congress

          • Congress has legislative, or law making powers

        • This is the longest section because it deals with representing the people

        • “All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives”

          • The Senate has two senators per state, while the House has representative apportioned by population

            • This is a major difference with the Articles of Confederation, which only had a unicameral legislature made up of the states

        • Article I, section 8: Lays out the Enumerated Powers of the Congress

          1. Can lay and collect taxes

          2. Borrow money

          3. Coin money

          4. Raise and Support armies

          5. Maintain a Navy

          • The Necessary and Proper Clause (Elastic Clause): Congress can make all laws to carry out the enumerated powers

      2. Article II: The Executive Branch

        • Provisions for the Executive Branch

        • The government elects a president by the electoral college

        • The President “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states…” AND “shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed”

        • The President must sign a bill for it to become a law

      3. Article III: The Judicial Branch

        • The judicial power is handed to a Supreme Court, but Congress can establish lower courts (they did so in 1789)

        • Jurisdiction: What kind of disputes are within the realm of the court’s power to decide, and they have 2 kinds of jurisdiction

          1. Cases with ambassadors and states, the Supreme Court will have original jurisdiction, which means they can hear it for the first time

          2. In all other cases the Supreme Court will have appellate jurisdiction, which means the court cannot hear a case for the first time, but can only appeals from the lower courts

      4. Article IV: State Relations

        • The federal government’s relationship to the states and the relationships of the states themselves

      5. Article V: Amendment Process

        • Process for amending the Constitution

          1. Proposal

            • Two-thirds of both Houses of Congress can propose

            • Two-thirds of state legislatures can propose

          2. Ratification

            • Three-fourths of the states have to agree in order to ratify

        • This article made it slightly easier to ratify amendments, because the Articles of Confederation required unanimous consent from the states

      6. Article VI: National Supremacy

        • The Supremacy Clause states that federal law will trump state law

        • This upset a lot of anti-federalists, because they feared when combined with the Necessary and Proper Clause it would result in a tyrannical government

      7. Article VII: Ratification Process

    • The Bill of Rights were added to appease Anti-federalists as it layed out rights that could not be infringed upon

Federalist 51

  • Central Passage

    • “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflection on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal control on government would be necessary.”

    • Human beings need a government and that government is there to protect the liberty of the people

  • The Balance of Government

    • “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

      • What he’s saying is to adopt a system of checks and balances / separation of powers

      • The systems of government must be made so that they balance each other out and check against too much power

      • Each branch needs as much equal power independent of each other

        • It may seem that Congress has the most power, but that’s why it’s split up into a bicameral legislature

    • There will be a balance of power between the federal and state government, which is known as federalism

  • Factions

    • Madison returns to the same conclusion: the more factions, the less able any one of them will be able to dominate the rest

    • “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition”

      • We don’t have angels governing us, nor are we angels ourselves

        • This means that the people in government are looking out for their own best interests

        • So open up the ability for many different factions and compromise will be the way to solve problems

Federalist 70

  • Justifying the need for a single executive, or president

    • Anti-federalists were concerned with the idea of a single executive having too much power (like a monarch)

    • Anti-federalists wanted several presidents

    • Hamilton argues against this for several reasons

  • Energy

    • “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.”

    • On the other hand, “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government.”

      • This implies that many executive would be slow to do things

    • An energetic executive means two things:

      1. Unity: One man can be secretive, descivice, and take action when necessary, but when you increase the number of executives these traits diminish

      2. Responsibility: Multiple executives will destroy responsibility, which means that if there was corruption no one would know who to blame as the multiple executives would never take responsibility

        • If there is only on executive, everyone would know who to blame immediately

    • In summary, a single executive would be the best in making sure the duties of their role is carried out with energy and decisiveness

Federalist 78

  • What is this about?

    • Speaks on the Judicial branch proposed in the constitution by Hamilton

    • Argues how and for how long justices will be appointed and what kind of power the judicial branch should have

  • Appointments

    • Federal Judges are appointed by the President under as stipulated in Article III of the constitution

    • “Judges hold their offices during good behavior”

      • As long as Federal Judges behave, they will hold their offices for life

    • Hamilton argues that lifetime appointments were a necessity to keep this branch of government as independent as possible

      • Judges don’t have to appease people to get reelected, so they can stay impartial

  • Scope and Limits

    • Hamilton says Judges “Must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”

      • He is talking about Judicial Review, which means the court is responsible for reviewing laws passed by Congress in making sure that they are in line with constitution

        • Laws that go against the constitution are declared null and void

    • This doesn’t make the judicial stronger, because courts are designed to be “an intermediate body between the people and the legislature” so that they are kept within their limits due to their ability to balance and check the other two branches

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

  • Equal Protection Clause

    • This document is supported by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and this clause supported social movements

      • Specifically, this document refers to the Civil Rights Movement in part led by MLK

        • State governments were failing to uphold the rights of black citizens, so MLK led his supporters to fight against this tyranny knowing that they would have to endure suffering and imprisonment

    • King led a protest in Birmingham and got arrested

      • In this middle of this, a group of white clergymen who were usually sympathetic to the movement said that Black people shouldn’t be disruptive but instead wait on white people to work through this issue in the courts

  • King’s Response

    • Letter From a Birmingham Jail is King’s response to this

    • He starts by saying why he’s in Birmingham even those he lives in Atlanta: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

    • A meaningful conversation will never occur unless something raises the stakes, such as constructing public demonstrations

      • People can’t just sit around and wait because freedom must be demanded by the oppressed

      • On another note, King mentions that they have been wait 340 years for their proper rights

    • King believes that the “white moderate” may be the most hindering to freedom than even the KKK

Required Court Cases

McCulloch v. Maryland

  • The court established the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution and federal laws over state laws

The United States v. Lopez

  • Congress exceeded its power under the Commerce Clause when it made possession of a gun in a school zone a federal crime

Baker v. Carr

  • Redistricting doesn’t raise a political question, so the federal courts can hear other cases that challenge redistricting plans that may violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment

Shaw v. Reno

  • Major-minority districts created under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be unconstitutional if race is the only factor used when created the district

Marbury v. Madison

  • The Court established the principle of judicial review, empowering the Supreme Court to declare something as unconstitutional from the other 2 branches

Engel v. Vitale

  • School sponsorship of religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment

Wisconsin v. Yoder

  • Compelling Amish students to attend school past the 8th grades violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment

Tinker v. Des Moines

  • Not allowing students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War in school violated the freedom of speech protection in the First Amendment

Schenck v. United States

  • Speech creating “clear and present danger” was not protected by the First Amendment and could be limited

New York Times v. United States

  • This case bolstered the freedom of the press protections as it established a “heavy presumption against prior restraint” even in cases involving national security

McDonald v Chicago

  • The 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is applicable to the states

Gideon v. Wainwright

  • The 6th Amendment’s right to an attorney extends procedural due process protections to felony defendants in state courts

Brown v. Board of Education

  • Race-based school segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment

Citizens United v. FEC

  • Political spending by corporations, associations, and labor unions is a form of protected speech under the 1st Amendment