MidtermStudyGuide - Wilson - fa24 - Copy.docx

#.. The merit system began with the Pendleton Act of 1883

#.. In the period in Supreme Court history from 1936 to the present, the major issues confronting the Court have involved personal liberty and social equality and the potential  conflict between the two.

#.. At the time the Constitution was ratified, the vote was limited to property owners or taxpayers, but by the administration of Andrew Jackson (1829-37) it had been broadened to include virtually all white male adults.

#.. Women could not vote in most states until the twentieth century. And in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave the vote to women nationwide.

#.. A political party is a group that seeks to elect candidates to public office by supplying them with a label – a ‘party identification’ – by which they are known to the electorate.

#.. Probably the most effective commodity at the command of interest groups is information. To busy legislators and bureaucrats, information is in short supply. Legislators in particular must tae positions on a staggering number of issues, about which they cannot possibly become experts.

#.. From the beginning of the republic, public officials have tried to get the media on their side while knowing that, because the media love controversy, they are as likely to attach as to praise. Thus the relationship between public officials and the media can best be described as one of love-hate.

#.. In 1968, the Supreme Court argued that the Constitution required actual racial mixing in the schools, not just the repeal of laws requiring racial separation. The impression was confirmed 3 years later (1971) when from a North Carolina case the Supreme Court ordered more busing to achieve a greater degree of integration. Then district courts have supervised redistricting and busing plans in localities all over the nation.

#. The transfer of political beliefs from one generation to the next reflects both heredity and to a lesser extent, family teaching.

#.. In the United States, unlike Great Britain, interest groups can easily gain access to government because in our diverse nation, political authority is so decentralized that it invites the creation of interest groups that try to affect some part of every decision.

#.. A major cause in the decline of union membership in the United States was a decline in popular approval of unions.

#.. Presidential races are more competitive than those for the House of Representatives.

#. . Regarding the ratification process right after the 1787 Constitutional Convention –   

Though democratic, the process established by the Framers for ratifying the Constitution was technically illegal. The Articles of Confederation, which still governed during the ratification process, could be amended only with the approval of all 13 state legislatures. The Framers wanted to bypass these legislatures which as Framers feared, would oppose the Constitution. The Framers wanted ratification with less than the consent of all 13 states because they knew a small number of states, such as Rhode Island, opposed the new Constitution.

#.. If the United States were still operating under the Articles of Confederation, only states are sovereign and issues such as the effect of acid rain on the environment would be handled by individual states

#.. The Framers made a tactical and perhaps a fundamental mistake. It quickly became clear that without at least the promise of a bill of rights, the Constitution would not be ratified. So, to secure ratification, supporters of the Constitution promised a Bill of Rights.

#. Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 upheld separate but equal facilities for white and black people on railroad cars. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education marked the end of the separate but equal interpretation of the Constitution.

#.. After Reconstruction ended in 1876, black voting shrank under the attacks of white supremacists.

#..The committees remain the place where the real work of Congress is done.

#.. Despite their formal powers, presidents spend most of their time persuading people.  According to Neustadt’s book Presidential Power, the power of persuasion is the president’s chief resource, and that power comes through bargaining.

# Presidents and their aides spend a lot of time dispensing favors to various members of Congress from whom they are seeking votes and political support.

Hence the skill of a president in communicating and winning others over is the necessary energizing factor in moving the institutions of the national government to action.

#.. In the 1950s, V. O. Key, Jr. found that differences in public opinion were closely associated with occupation. People holding managerial or professional jobs had distinctly conservative views on social welfare policy and more internationalist views on foreign policy than manual workers.

 #..  Several factors explain the striking differences between American and European political parties. First, the federal system of government in the United States decentralized political authority and this decentralizes political party organizations.

#.. In the 19th century, the members of congress from a given caucus would meet to pick their presidential candidate. After the caucuses were replaced by the national nominating conventions the real power was welded by local party leaders.

#.. Under federalism, the federal government should guarantee to each state a “republican form of government.” The Constitution prohibits the creation of new states within existing states, the combination of two states, or the change of existing state boundaries without the approval of the legislatures of the states affected as well as of the congress.

Under confederation, only states are sovereign (sovereignty - the principle of absolute and unlimited power). Under unitary system, the central government is the only sovereign entity and change boundaries of its subdivisional governmental units, among other things.

#.. Woodrow Wilson once said,

“The question of the relation of the states to the federal government is the cardinal question of our Constitutional system. It cannot be settled by the opinion of one generation, because it is a question of growth, and each successive stage of our political and economic development gives it a new aspect, makes it a new question.”

#.. Latinos are the largest and  fastest-growing minority group in America.

#.. The adversarial, contentious spirit of U.S. society reflects not only our preoccupation with individual rights but also our long –standing distrust of authority and of people wilding power.

#.. According to the USA Patriot Act, the government may tap, if it has a court order, any telephone a suspect uses instead of having to get a separate order for each telephone. The government may tap, if it has a court order, Internet communications. The government, with a court order, may seize voice mail.

#.. The First Amendment prohibits congress from making a law ‘respecting’ an ‘establishment’ of religion. The Supreme Court has more or less consistently interpreted this vague phrase to mean that the Constitution erects a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state. The language, a ‘wall of separation,’ comes from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, who was opposed to having the Church of England as the established church of his native Virginia.

#.. Democracy is a word with at least two different meanings. First, the term democracy is used to describe those regimes that come as close as possible to Aristotle’s definition – the ‘rule of the many.’

The second definition of democracy is the principle of governance of most nations that are called democratic. It was most concisely stated by the economist Joseph Schumpeter: ‘The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals [that is, leaders] acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.’

#.. By authority we mean the right to use power. The exercise of rightful power – that is, of authority – is ordinarily easier than the exercise of power not supported by any persuasive claim of right. In the United States, the US Constitution today is widely, if not unanimously, accepted as a source of legitimate authority.

#.. The liberties the colonists fought to protect were, they thought, widely understood. They were based not on the generosity of the king or the language of statutes but on a ‘higher law’ embodying ‘natural rights’ that were ordained by God.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence famously set out the case for independence. The 11 years that elapsed between the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the Constitution in 1787 were years of turmoil, uncertainly, and fear.