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| The process through which society settles its conflicts. |
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| Decisions by government to pursue particular courses of action. |
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| A form of government in which the people govern, either directly or through elected representatives. |
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| The idea that there are definable limits on the rightful power of a government over its citizens. |
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| The systematic study of government and politics. |
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| The ability of persons, groups, or institutions to influence political developments. |
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| The idea that the majority prevails not only in elections but also in policy determination. |
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| A theory of American politics that holds that society’s interests are substantially represented through power exercised by groups. |
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| The recognized right of officials to exercise power as a result of the positions they hold. |
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| The use of courts of law as a means by which individuals protect their rights and settle their conflicts. |
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| An economic system based on the idea that government should interfere with economic transactions as little as possible. Free enterprise and self-reliance are the collective and individual principles that underpin free markets. |
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| The power that corporations exercise in their effort to influence government and maintain control of the workplace. |
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| The notion that wealthy and well-connected individuals exercise power over certain areas of public policy. |
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| The careful gathering and sifting of information in the process of forming a knowledgeable view about a political issue. |
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| The principle that the people are the ultimate source and should have a voice in their governing. (In practice, self-government has come to mean a government based on majority rule.) |
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| A government that is subject to strict limits on its lawful uses of power, and hence on its ability to deprive people of their liberty. |
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| A voluntary agreement by individuals to form government, which is then obliged to act within the confines of the agreement. |
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| inalienable (natural) rights |
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| Those rights that persons theoretically possessed in the state of nature, prior to the formation of governments. These rights, including those of life, liberty, and property, are considered inherent and, as such, are inalienable. Since government is established by people, government has the responsibility to preserve these rights. |
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| Virginia (large-state) Plan |
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| A constitutional proposal for a strong Congress with two chambers, both of which would be based on numerical representation, thus granting more power to the larger states. |
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| New Jersey (small-state) Plan |
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| A constitutional proposal for a strengthened Congress but one in which each state would have a single vote, thus granting a small state the same legislative power as a large state. |
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| The agreement at the constitutional convention to create a two-chamber Congress with the House apportioned by population and the Senate apportioned equally by state. |
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| A compromise worked out at the 1787 convention between northern states and southern states. Each slave was to be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of federal taxation and congressional apportionment (number of seats in the House of Representative). |
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| A term used to describe proponents of the Constitution during the debate over ratification. |
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| A term used to describe opponents of the Constitution during the debate over ratification. |
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| The fundamental law that defines how a government will legitimately operate. |
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| A constitutional means of limiting government by listing those powers that government is expressly prohibited from using. |
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| The method of limiting the U.S. government by confining its scope of authority to those powers expressly granted in the Constitution. |
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| The division of the powers of government among separate institutions or branches. |
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| separated institutions sharing power |
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| The principle that, as a way to limit government, its powers should be divided among separate branches, each of which also shares in the power of the others as a means of checking and balancing them. The result is that no one branch can exercise power decisively without the support or acquiescence of the others. |
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| The elaborate system of divided spheres of authority provided by the U.S. Constitution as a means of controlling the power of government. The separation of powers among the branches of the national government, federalism, and the different methods of selecting national officers are all part of this system. |
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| The first ten amendments to the Constitution. They include rights such as freedom of speech and religion. |
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| The power of courts to decide whether a governmental institution has acted within its constitutional powers and, if not, to declare its action null and void. |
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| The potential of a majority to monopolize power for its own gain to the detriment of minority rights and interests. |
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| The principle that individuals should be free to act and think as they choose, provided they do not infringe unreasonably on the freedom and well-being of others |
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| democracy (according to the framers) |
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| A form of government in which the power of the majority is unlimited, whether exercised directly or through a representative body. |
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| A form of government in which the people’s representatives decide policy through institutions structured in ways that foster deliberation, slow the progress of decision making, and operate within restraints that protect individual liberty. A republic is designed, not to prevent the people from governing, but to filter popular sentiment in ways that reduce the likelihood of hasty, ill-conceived, and injurious policies. To the framers, the Constitution’s separation of powers and other limits on power were hallmarks of a republican form of government, as opposed to a democratic form, which places no limits on the majority. |
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| Elected representatives whose obligation is to act in accordance with their own consciences as to what policies are in the best interests of the public. |
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| An unofficial term that refers to the electors who cast the states’ electoral votes. |
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| The method of voting that is used to choose the U.S. president. Each state has the same number of electoral votes as it has members in Congress (House and Senate combined). By tradition, electoral voting is tied to a state’s popular voting. The candidate with the most popular votes in a state (or, in a few states, the most votes in a congressional district) receives its electoral votes. |
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| Elected representatives whose obligation is to act in accordance with the expressed wishes of the people they represent. |
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| A form of election in which voters choose a party’s nominees for public office. In most states, eligibility to vote in a party’s primary election is limited to voters who are registered members of the party. |
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| constitutional democratic republic |
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| A government that is constitutional in its provisions for minority rights and rule by law, democratic in its provisions for majority influence through elections, and a republic in its mix of deliberative institutions, which check and balance each other. |
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| A governmental system in which authority is divided between two sovereign levels of government: national and regional. |
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| The supreme (or ultimate) authority to govern within a certain geographical area. |
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| A governmental system in which sovereignty is vested entirely in subnational (state) governments. |
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| A governmental system in which the national government alone has sovereign (ultimate) authority. |
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| enumerated (expressed) powers |
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| The seventeen powers granted to the national government under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. These powers include taxation and the regulation of commerce as well as the authority to provide for the national defense. |
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| Article VI of the Constitution, which makes national law supreme over state law when the national government is acting within its constitutional limits. |
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| “necessary and proper” (elastic) clause |
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| The authority granted Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” for the implementation of its enumerated powers. |
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| The federal government’s constitutional authority (through the “necessary and proper” clause) to take action that is not expressly authorized by the Constitution but that supports actions that are so authorized. |
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| The powers granted to the states under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. |
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| The process by which national authority has increased over the course of U.S. history as a result primarily of economic change but also of political action. |
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| A doctrine based on the idea that a precise separation of national power and state power is both possible and desirable. |
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| The situation in which the national, state, and local levels work together to solve problems. |
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| A term that refers to the expenditure of federal funds on programs run in part through states and localities. |
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| Federal cash payments to states and localities for programs they administer. |
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| Federal grants-in-aid that permit state and local officials to decide how the money will be spent within a general area, such as education or health. |
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| Federal grants-in-aid to states and localities that can be used only for designated projects. |
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| The passing down of authority from the national government to the state and local governments. |
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| The fundamental individual rights of a free society, such as freedom of speech and the right to a jury trial, which in the United States are protected by the Bill of Rights. |
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| clear-and-present-danger test |
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| A test devised by the Supreme Court in 1919 in order to define the limits of free speech in the context of national security. According to the test, government cannot abridge political expression unless it presents a clear and present danger to the nation’s security. |
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| Action (for example, the waving or burning of a flag) for the purpose of expressing a political opinion. |
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| Government prohibition of speech or publication before the fact, which is presumed by the courts to be unconstitutional unless the justification for it is overwhelming. |
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| due process clause (of the Fourteenth Amendment) |
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| The clause of the Constitution that has been used by the judiciary to apply the Bill of Rights to the actions of state governments. |
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| The process by which certain of the rights (for example, freedom of speech) contained in the Bill of Rights become applicable through the Fourteenth Amendment to actions by the state governments. |
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| imminent lawless action test |
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| A legal test that says government cannot lawfully suppress advocacy that promotes lawless action unless such advocacy is aimed at producing, and is likely to produce, imminent lawless action. |
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| Publication of material that falsely damages a person’s reputation. |
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| Spoken words that falsely damage a person’s reputation. |
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| The First Amendment provision stating that government may not favor one religion over another or favor religion over no religion, and prohibiting Congress from passing laws respecting the establishment of religion. |
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| A three-part test to determine whether a law relating to religion is valid under the religious establishment clause. To be valid, a law must have a secure purpose, serve neither to advance nor inhibit religion, and avoid excessive government entanglement with religion. |
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| A First Amendment provision that prohibits the government from interfering with the practice of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. |
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| A right implied by the freedoms in the Bill of Rights that grants individuals a degree of personal privacy upon which government cannot lawfully intrude. The right gives individuals a level of free choice in areas such as reproduction and intimate relations. |
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| The constitutional requirement that government must follow proper legal procedures before a person can be legitimately punished for an alleged offense. |
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| The legal principle that government is prohibited from using in trials evidence that was obtained by unconstitutional means (for example, illegal search and seizure). |
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| The right of individual Americans to hold and communicate thoughts of their choosing. |
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| civil rights, or equal rights |
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| The right of every person to equal protection under the laws and equal access to society’s opportunities and public facilities. |
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| A clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that forbids any state to deny equal protection of the laws to any individual within its jurisdiction. |
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| A test applied by courts to laws that treat individuals unequally. Such a law may be deemed constitutional if its purpose is held to be “reasonably” related to a legitimate government interest. |
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| A test applied by courts to laws that attempt a racial or ethnic classification. In effect, the strict-scrutiny test eliminates race or ethnicity as a legal classification when it places minority-group members at a disadvantage. |
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| Legal classifications, such as race and national origin, that have invidious discrimination as their purpose and therefore are unconstitutional. |
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| Refers to programs designed to ensure that women, minorities, and other traditionally disadvantaged groups have full and equal opportunities in employment, education, and other areas of life. |
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| Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, ethnicity, and the like that results from social, economic, and cultural biases and conditions. |
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Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, ethnicity, and the like that results from
a law. |
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