Constitutional Democracy: Key Concepts

Section 1: Development of Constitutional Democracy

• State of nature: It is a concept describing human life before societies or governments existed.
• Natural rights: These are liberties inherent to individuals in the state of nature, including the rights to life, liberty, and property; considered God-given and unalienable.
• Social contract: This represents an agreement among people to establish a government wherein citizens consent to be governed as long as the government protects their natural rights.
• The social contract defines human nature as equal in natural rights, and the contract outlines protected rights and shared interests.
• People use their natural rights to set up a social contract.
• Direct democracy: A form of government where citizens directly participate in decision-making without elected leaders.
• Popular vote: The outcome of a democratic election is determined by the individual who receives the largest number of votes from eligible voters.
• Popular sovereignty: This principle asserts that the people control their government by selecting leaders and laws, which reflects a republic.
• Due process: Government actions must adhere to fair procedures that apply equally to all individuals, as guaranteed by the 5th and 14th Amendments.
• Declaration of Independence: Authored primarily by Thomas Jefferson, it initiated the Revolutionary War, articulated natural rights, and declared America's independence by establishing a new social contract.
• Articles of Confederation: The first U.S. government, a unicameral Congress, lacked the power to tax, regulate commerce, or enforce laws, leading to its failure as a weak national government with sovereign states.
• Shay's Rebellion: Led by Daniel Shay, it highlighted the weaknesses of the Confederation government and prompted the call for the Constitutional Convention.
• Constitutional Convention: A 1787 meeting in Philadelphia where state leaders drafted the U.S. Constitution with three branches of government, checks and balances, and provisions for elections.
• Virginia Plan: Proposed a bicameral legislature with representation based on state population and advocated for stronger executive and judicial branches.

Key Concepts in Governance and Representation

• Chamber: Refers to one of the houses or groups of elected officials in a legislature. The U.S. Congress consists of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate).
• Bicameral legislature: A lawmaking body with two separate chambers or groups of elected officials, as in the Virginia Plan.
• New Jersey Plan: Proposed a unicameral national Legislative Branch with one vote per state, also seeking executive and judicial branches.
• Unicameral legislature: A lawmaking body with one chamber, similar to that under the Articles of Confederation Congress and as proposed in the New Jersey Plan.
• Great compromise: Also known as the Connecticut Compromise, it resolved the issue of representation by creating a bicameral legislature: representation based on population in the House and equal representation of states in the Senate.
• Three-fifths compromise: An agreement that counted a state's free population plus 60% of its slave population for federal taxation and representation purposes.
• Institution of slavery: The practice involves depriving people of their liberty, exploiting their labor, and treating them as property, often subjecting them to harsh conditions.
• Separation of powers: The division of government powers into three branches: legislative (proposes laws), executive (enforces laws), and judicial (interprets laws).
• Checks and balances: Powers that enable each branch of government to limit the power of the other two, requiring collaboration for new official actions.
• Federal system/federalism: System where power is divided between state and national governments.
• Federal Government: This is the national government in Washington, D.C. and has three branches.
• Ratification: The official approval of a treaty, contract, or agreement, such as the U.S. Constitution, debated between Federalists (supporters) and Anti-federalists (opponents, who also wanted a Bill of Rights).
• The Federalist Papers: A series of 85 essays written by Founding Fathers like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to advocate for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787-88.
• Faction: Also called an interest group, a group of people who organize themselves to petition government for their special concern or historically would actually try to take over the government.

Balancing Power and Individual Rights

• Federalist #10: James Madison explains how the U.S Constitution stops extreme factions because of electing leaders (a republic), three Branches, and checks & balances.
• Republic: Political power is held by the people who elect representatives to make laws on their behalf.
• Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791, protect citizens' civil liberties and civil rights, advocated by the Anti-Federalists.
• Levy: To demand payment of a tax.

Section 2: Structure of the U.S. Government

• Legislative Branch: Congress legislates by proposing, debating, and voting on new laws.
• Lower chamber: The larger chamber in a bicameral legislature, which is the House of Representatives in the United States.
• Upper chamber: The smaller chamber in a bicameral legislature, which is the Senate in the United States.
• Enumerated/expressed powers: Powers explicitly granted to the Federal Government, like regulating interstate and foreign commerce, raising armies, declaring war, coining money, and taxation.
• Interstate commerce clause: An enumerated power of Congress is the power to regulate commerce and trade between two or more states.
• Intrastate commerce: When a State Government passes laws on businesses just in their State.
• Inherent powers: National Powers of the president or Congress that are neither enumerated nor implied but assumed to exist as a direct result of the country's existence.
• Implied powers: Powers not expressly defined in the Constitution but implied through a loose interpretation of the "Necessary and Proper" clause.
• Bipartisan: Involves agreement from "two factions" or both political parties on a government action, issue, or law.
• Oversight: The review and monitoring of other bodies by a branch of government, such as Congress overseeing federal agencies.
• Appropriations: Money provided by Congress for items in the federal government's budget.
• Deficit spending: When the federal government spends more money than it earns in a fiscal year.
• Discretionary spending: Spending that can be altered yearly through the congressional appropriations process, including scientific research, housing, health, and education.
• Budget resolution: A plan for government revenue and spending in the next fiscal year, including budget priorities and discretionary spending limits.
• Pork-barrel spending: Funds directed towards often unnecessary local projects that benefit a specific member of Congress's district or state.
• Advice and consent: A Senate power to approve presidential nominations for executive and judicial positions and to ratify foreign treaties.

Impeachment, Committees, and Congressional Procedures

• Impeachment: A legislative process to remove government officials for "high crimes and misdemeanors," requiring a majority vote in the House of Representatives and a two-thirds vote in the Senate for conviction and removal.
• Articles of impeachment: A document in the House that accuses an official of constitutional abuse, requiring a majority vote to adopt and impeach the official.
• Supermajority: Also referred to as an absolute majority, this is any number greater than 50%.
• Committee: A small group of representatives or senators assigned to a policy area to review, research, and propose laws.
• Standing committee: A permanent entity that researches, writes, and introduces legislation in specific policy areas.
• Conference committees: These are temporary joint committees, responsible to form one version of a bill passed differently by the House and Senate, before a final vote.
• Select committees: These are temporary committees that investigate specific issues or policy areas not covered by standing committees.
• Joint committees: Include members from both the House and Senate to address issues like economic or tax policies.
• Rules committee: A powerful committee in the House that sets parameters for debate and amendments on legislation.
• Census: A constitutionally required population count every ten years, which is the first step in congressional reapportionment.
• Congressional district: One of 435 legally established areas in a State that is represented by one member of the House of Representatives.
• Reapportionment: Reassigning the number of House seats to each state based on population size, determined by the U.S. census every ten years.
• Redistricting: Redrawing voting district boundaries by each State Government after reapportionment to ensure equal population size.
• Gerrymandering: This is illegal when redistricting is done to favor one political party.
• Majority party: The political party with more seats in either the House or Senate.
• Minority party: The political party with fewer seats in either the House or Senate.
• Speaker of the House: The elected leader of the majority party in the House, who presides over sessions, makes committee assignments, and controls the agenda.
• Majority leader: The second-in-command to the Speaker in the House, affiliated with the majority party.
• Minority leader: The elected leader of the minority party in the House of Representatives.
• Majority whip: A leader from the majority party in either the House or Senate who coordinates strategy and maintains party discipline.
• Minority whip: A leader from the minority party in either the House or Senate who coordinates strategy and maintains party discipline
• President pro tempore: The longest-serving Senator in the U.S. Senate who serves as the Chief Presiding Officer in the absence of the Vice President.
• Filibuster: A political procedure in the Senate allowing a senator to delay or prevent a vote on a proposal by extended speaking.
• Cloture: A procedural mechanism in the U.S. Senate where 60 members (three-fifths) of the entire Senate vote to end a filibuster.
• Bill of attainder: A law passed by Congress that declares a person guilty of a crime and punishing that person without a trial
• Constituent: A citizen within the particular voting district of an elected official.

Executive and Judicial Branch Key Functions

• Executive Branch: Includes the President and is responsible for executing, enforcing, administering, or implementing laws.
• Commander-in-chief: The President's constitutional authority over the U.S. military, including appointing and dismissing commanders.
• Chief executive: The President's power to enforce laws, overseeing government workers and requiring reports on law enforcement.
• Monroe Doctrine: The principle that interventions by European powers in the Western Hemisphere would be considered acts of aggression.
• Executive memorandum: The President's tool to manage the operations of federal departments and agencies.
• Executive orders: Directives issued by the President to government agencies as a way to change existing laws and enforce the President's agenda.
• Executive agreements: Formal agreements between the President and other countries that do not require Senate confirmation.
• Recess appointment: A temporary appointment of a federal official made by the President when the Senate is not in session.
• Veto: The President's power to reject a law passed by Congress, meaning "I forbid" in Latin.
• Line-item veto: The power to reject specific parts of a bill rather than the entire bill; most governors have this power, but the President does not.
• Bureaucracy/administrative agencies: Government departments and agencies that enforce laws under the President, employing millions of federal workers.
• Loophole: A flaw in the system that allows someone to avoid having to follow a rule.
• Judicial Branch: Judges interpret and apply laws in court cases.
• Civil cases: Court cases based on civil law, settling disputes between individuals, companies, or government entities.
• Criminal cases: Court cases involving crimes that cause harm to others or their property, prosecuted by government attorneys.
• Common law: Law based on custom, precedent, and court decisions rather than legislative decree.
• Lower court: Any court below the Supreme Court in the federal or state system, also called district courts.
• Appeal: Asking a higher court to overturn a lower court's decision, usually heard by appellate courts.
• Party in law cases: The person or group directly involved in a case, distinct from a political party.
• Circuit courts: Courts that hear cases in multiple counties or districts, with panels of three rotating judges.
• Jurisdiction: The territory assigned to a judge to decide court cases, with the U.S. Supreme Court having both original and appellate jurisdiction.
• Original Jurisdiction: The power of a court to hear and decide a case for the first time.
• Appellate Jurisdiction: The power of a court to review court cases appealed up to them.
• Justices: The official name of judges on the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Interpretation: Deciding on or explaining he meaning of something.
• Judicial review: The power of courts to overturn laws or actions conflicting with the Constitution (established in Marbury v. Madison).

Judicial Philosophies and Principles

• Judicial restraint: A viewpoint that judges should defer to elected branches and use stare decisis, with a strict interpretation of the Bill of Rights.
• Defer: To agree to follow someone else's opinion.
• Strict constructionist: Interpreting the Constitution based on its specific mentions.
• Precedent: A previous court decision used to justify decisions in later cases.
• Stare decisis: Courts should rely on previous decisions and precedents.
• Judicial activism: Courts should defend individual rights, stopping other branches from infringing on those rights.
• Loose construction: Constitution can be reinterpreted to create new legal standards for changing conditions.
• Amicus briefs: Legal arguments filed by those not directly involved in a case but with an interest in its outcome.
• Federalism/federal system: A structure of government that divides constitutional power and authority between the national/federal and state government.
• Federal Government: The national government in Washington, D.C., whose actions are federal actions.
• Reserved powers: Constitutional powers reserved to State Governments by the 10th Amendment.
• Concurrent powers: Powers shared by state and federal governments like taxation and establishing courts.
• Supremacy Clause: The Constitution states that Federal Government laws outweigh state laws.
• Full Faith and Credit Clause: States must accept legal actions and contracts from other states per Article IV.

Section 3: Political Participation: Elections and Interest Groups

• Hard Money: Direct money donations to candidates from individuals or interest groups.
• Soft Money: Direct money donations to political parties.
• Federal Election Campaign Act: A 1971 law that regulates hard money donations and requires interest groups to establish Political Action Committees (PACs); candidates and PACs must report hard money contributions.
• Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act: Law to limit "soft money" donations to political parties.
• Incumbents: Candidates currently holding office and running for re-election.
• Incumbency advantage: The tendency of voters to re-elect a candidate who is currently serving.
• Seat: The office or position for which a candidate is running.
• Congressional voting district: One of 435 legally established voting areas of a State represented by one member of the House of Representatives.
• Primary election: Pre-elections held to narrow the field for the November Election Ballot. Primaries can be 'open' or 'closed.’
• Open Primaries: Voters can decide which one political party's candidates they want to vote for in an open primary.
• Closed Primaries: Voters must be registered in a political party to vote in a closed primary.
• Caucus: A political party meeting where delegates are selected to support a candidate.
• Delegates: Political party leaders who attend the national, nominating convention to report on who won the Primary or Caucus in their State.
• National (or nominating) convention: A national political party meeting, where all the political party leaders officially count up who won the most primaries and caucuses across the country
• Brokered convention: National party convention where no candidate for the party's presidential nomination enters with a majority of the convention's delegates
• Independent/swing voters: Voters with no preference for a political party.
• "Safe" states: States with strong leanings toward a particular political party, requiring relatively little effort from that party to win campaigns.
• Swing states: States with a history of voting for both political parties in recent presidential elections
• General election: The November election where candidates for elected office are formally chosen, or where the allocation of presidential electoral votes is decided.
• Electors: Persons selected by each State to cast Electoral College votes for their State.
• Electoral votes: The votes that actually elect a president accoridng to the Constitution.
• Winner-take-all: Most states use this system by awarding all their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins 50.01% or more of the popular vote in their State.
• District method: Method of allocating the Electoral College votes of a state in a presidential election among candidates according to the popular vote in each congressional district.
• Public funding: When candidates receive government funding to help finance their campaigns.
• Faithless electors: Electors vote against their State's vote.

Interest Groups and Political Influence

• Interest groups: A group that tries to influence government decisions to get favorable benefits and laws for their group.
• Public interest groups: A group that pursues policies or goods that members perceive to be useful for most or all citizens.
• Private interest group: Pursues government laws/policies for themselves/their members.
• Particularized: Benefits that are specific to an individual or group where others can be excluded.
• Trade/professional association: An interest group comprised of many groups/institutions with similar interests joining together in larger interest groups.
• Legislative liaison: An individual who represents a government institution to other governmental decision-makers.
• Lobby: To persuade or try to influence a politician or public official.
• Lobbyist: Representative of an interest/organization who attempts to influence legislators.
• Inside lobbying: An interest group's attempt to directly influence governmental officials
• Outside lobbying: An interest group's attempt to contact government for that group by providing government to the public.
• Political Action Committees (PAC): Collect funds from donors and make limited campaign contributions to political candidates who give soft money to political parties.
• Buckley v. Valeo: Spending money in an election to have essentially equivalent to free speech.
• The case also upheld hard-money donation limits to candidates (that is, money donated to a candidate's campaign).
• The judgment also allowed candidates to spend an unlimited amount of their own money (spend their own 'bucks').
• Super PACs: A nonprofit organization can spend unlimited amounts of money on 'political speech' to help or hurt candidates.
• Bundling: "Bundlers" collect individual private campaign donations and submit them as a contribution.
• Scorecards: Interest Groups rate or score incumbents on how well the incumbents vote for laws in favor of the group.
• Amicus briefs: A inside lobbying strategy.
• Suffrage/franchise: The right to vote.
• Cast their ballots: Also called 'voter turnout'
• Ballot: A list of candidates running for office that voters choose from.
• Polling place: A building where voting takes place.
• Registration: Meet qualifications to vote in and election.
• Disenfranchise: Being denied the right to vote through literacy tests or poll taxes.
• Literacy tests: Historically used to prevent African Americans.
• Poll taxes: Prevented African Americans from voting
• Voting Rights Act of 1965: Stopped literacy tests.
• Online voter registration: Register to vote over the internet
• Motor Voter Law: Allows voters to register when they sign up for a driver's license.
• Voting-eligible population: Citizens who are registered or not eligible to vote.

Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

• Civil rights: Guarantee of equal opportunity/protection.
• Civil liberties: Freedoms guaranteed to individuals
• Prescriptions: Actions the government is required to take.
• Proscriptions: Limits on what the government can do.
• Emancipation: To legally free someone who is enslaved.
• Abolition: To be opposed to or to work to end slavery.
• Abolitionists: The individuals who were opposed to and sought to end slavery of Black people.
• Reconstruction: Followed the Civil War, addressing transition of slave states to non-slave economies and rendering full freedom, citizenship, and equality to African Americans.
• Ku Klux Klan: A terrorist hate organization that espouses white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration ideologies,
• Civil Rights Movement: Led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Promoting nonviolent civil disobedience. Culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Civil Rights Act of 1964: Federal law that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
• Equal treatment: Required under the 14th Amendment's ‘equal protection' clause.
• Voting Rights Act of 1965: Stopped literacy tests
• Compliance: To follow legal requirements
• Grassroots organizations: Organizations of citizens that ask the government for a change in policy.
• Activists: Individuals deeply committed to a cause who take nonviolent action.
• Rational basis test: When the judge asks the accuser to prove their discrimination to the Court
• Intermediate scrutiny test: Government is discriminating if the basis of gender/sex for government workers.
• Strict scrutiny test: A rigorous set of criteria that courts use to analyze cases to see if a law or regulation is needed because of a "compelling state interest."
• Bear the burden of proof: The requirement for a party to provide evidence beyond a certain legal standard.
• Infringed: Reduced or taken away
• De jure segregation: Segregation that is required by law.
• De facto segregation: Segregation that is not legally required.
• White flight: Large-scale migration of Whites from racially mixed urban areas.
• Racial profiling: Making judgments solely on based on stereotypes about the person's race.
• Stop-and-frisk: Allows police to stop/search if committing a crime.
• Asset forfeiture: Lets law enforcement keep/sell property if they claim was involved in crime.
• Public: Interact with others.
• Private: When we are alone.
• Ex post facto laws: Applies retroactively.
• Bill of attainder: Where Congress would pass person a law to declare a person guilty of a crime.
• Habeas corpus: Is a constitutional protection or right for a jailed citizen to appear before a judge to hear about a criminal charge.
• Redress of grievances: Ask the government to solve problems/complaint.
• Bail: $ to release from custody to appear later.
• Secular: nonreligious
• Search: Locate documents
• Search warrant: Police can't search without a search warrant.

Legal Standards and Protections

• Seizure: Government takes evidence to use in trial.
• Probable cause: Standard to determine search or seizure.
• Exclusionary rule: Mapp V. Ohio evidence cannot be used if illegal search.
• Double jeopardy: Tried twice for the same crime.
• Damages: $ court orders accused person to pay to victim.
• Constitutional rights: Rights granted to you.
• Statutory right: A right granted to you in law.
• Procedural right: An equal legal procedure or due process.
• Voir dire: Questioning of potential jurors, meaning "To speak the truth".
• Economic liberty: Right of individuals to use/trade value.
• Eminent domain: Takings clause
• Establishment Clause: Prevents the government from establishing an official region
• Established church: 1 supported by taxes
• Free Exercise Clause: Individual religious beliefs
• Civil War Amendment: Ended slavery + equal protection.
• Equal Protection Clause: Can't deny anyone equal protection.
• Jim Crow Laws: Discriminate against African Americans.
• Equal Rights Amendment: Equal treatment regardless of sex
• Obergefell v. Hodges: Legalized same-sex marriage
• Selective incorporation: Bill of rights applied through states.
• Abridgment: To limit reduce less.

Section 5: Public Opinion and the Media

• Mass media: Present day forms of digital /social media etc that technology communicates.
• Political discourse: Discussions/politics events.
• Broadcast media: TV/Radio by FCC.
• Hypodermic theory: Message is directly injected and believed by receiver.
• Cultivation theory: Media cultivates worldview that becomes accepted by population.
• Minimal effects theory: Media has little affects in people.
• Framing: Story with news w/ facts opionions ect,.
• Priming: Predisposing readers/newers to think and act.
• Overt media: Media has message that has discloses political beliefs framing.
• Covert media: Media political message is presented.
• Agenda setting: Media focuses public attention topics via coverage
• Whistleblower: Employee/public official reports evidence of abuse in.
• Muckraking: Sought out scandals misconduct in politic
• Horse-race journalism: Reports who are ahead.
• Bandwagon effect: Increases coverage of those candidates currently doing well.
• Pack journalism: All write about all same issues
• Prior restraint: Suppression of speech.
• Equal-time rule: Broadcaster that all candidates can receive equal opportune
• Fairness doctrine: Required balanced air time.
• Sunshine laws: Mandated laws that meet in the public
• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Requires executive to know laws
• Miller v. California: supreme Court case that identified a Miller test for obscenity allowing
• Collecting public oppinon: Refered too as public mood etc,.
• Political cultures: beliefs and values
• Political socialization: Joined countries political world
• Political ideologies: About the power and structure
• Political spectrum: Classify the ideologies
• Liberal: Quality first
• Classical Liberalism: Individual rights.
• Conservative: Personal freedom
• Gender gap: Differences political between man and women Political elites:.
• Mandate: Claim authority
• Research: Learning background
• Heuristics: labels from labels