Browse & study

What did the Declaration of Independence do?

• a. Declared the colonies free of British rule ✓
• b. Established the federal court system
• c. Freed the enslaved people of the South
• d. Created the office of President

Adopted on 4 July 1776, it announced that the thirteen colonies were 'Free and Independent States', no longer subject to the British Crown. It created no government of its own.

When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

• a. July 4, 1776 ✓
• b. July 4, 1789
• c. September 17, 1787
• d. March 4, 1801

Congress voted for independence on 2 July 1776 and approved the final text of the Declaration on 4 July — the date printed at the top of the document.

Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

• a. Thomas Jefferson ✓
• b. George Washington
• c. James Madison
• d. Benjamin Franklin

Jefferson was the principal author, working from a five-man committee that also included Franklin and John Adams; Congress then edited the draft heavily.

Which rights does the Declaration of Independence name as unalienable?

• a. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ✓
• b. Life, liberty and property
• c. Speech, religion and assembly
• d. Trial by jury and habeas corpus

Jefferson adapted Locke's 'life, liberty and estate', replacing property with 'the pursuit of Happiness'.

According to the Declaration, from where do governments derive their just powers?

• a. From the consent of the governed ✓
• b. From the Crown
• c. From the states that create them
• d. From divine right

'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed' — the sentence that makes the rest of the document an argument rather than a complaint.

How many colonies declared independence in 1776?

• a. 13 ✓
• b. 12
• c. 14
• d. 15

Thirteen — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

What was the first constitution of the United States?

• a. The Articles of Confederation ✓
• b. The Mayflower Compact
• c. The Declaration of Independence
• d. The Northwest Ordinance

The Articles governed from 1781 until the Constitution took effect in 1789. They created a 'firm league of friendship' among the states rather than a national government.

Which power did the national government lack under the Articles of Confederation?

• a. The power to levy taxes directly ✓
• b. The power to declare war
• c. The power to make treaties
• d. The power to run a post office

Congress could requisition money from the states but could not tax. States frequently paid nothing, and the resulting insolvency was the strongest argument for a new constitution.

Under the Articles of Confederation, how many states had to agree to amend them?

• a. All thirteen ✓
• b. Nine of thirteen
• c. Two-thirds
• d. A simple majority

Amendment required unanimous consent of the state legislatures, which is why no amendment ever passed and why the Convention chose to start over instead.

Which 1786–87 uprising in Massachusetts sharpened the case for a stronger national government?

• a. Shays' Rebellion ✓
• b. The Whiskey Rebellion
• c. Bacon's Rebellion
• d. Dorr's Rebellion

Debt-ridden farmers led by Daniel Shays shut down courts; the Confederation had no army to respond. The Constitutional Convention met months later.

In what year was the Constitution written?

• a. 1787 ✓
• b. 1776
• c. 1791
• d. 1789

The Convention sat in Philadelphia from May to September 1787; the delegates signed on 17 September 1787.

Who is called the 'Father of the Constitution'?

• a. James Madison ✓
• b. Thomas Jefferson
• c. Alexander Hamilton
• d. John Jay

Madison drafted the Virginia Plan, kept the Convention's fullest notes, and did more than anyone to shape the final text — and later the Bill of Rights.

What did the Great Compromise (the Connecticut Compromise) settle?

• a. A House apportioned by population and a Senate with two seats per state ✓
• b. How enslaved people would be counted
• c. Whether the President would be directly elected
• d. Whether to have a bill of rights

It broke the deadlock between the Virginia Plan (representation by population) and the New Jersey Plan (equal representation) by giving each principle its own chamber.

What did the Three-Fifths Compromise determine?

• a. That three-fifths of the enslaved population counted toward representation and direct taxation ✓
• b. That three-fifths of the states could ratify the Constitution
• c. That three-fifths of Congress could override a veto
• d. That three-fifths of a state's electors were bound to the popular vote

Article I, Section 2 counted 'three fifths of all other Persons' for apportionment. The Fourteenth Amendment repealed the clause in 1868.

Who presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787?

• a. George Washington ✓
• b. Benjamin Franklin
• c. James Madison
• d. Gouverneur Morris

Washington was elected president of the Convention unanimously on its first working day, and said almost nothing in debate — his presence was the point.

How many states had to ratify the Constitution for it to take effect?

• a. Nine of thirteen ✓
• b. All thirteen
• c. Seven of thirteen
• d. Eleven of thirteen

Article VII set ratification by conventions in nine states. New Hampshire was the ninth, in June 1788; Rhode Island did not ratify until 1790.

What are the Federalist Papers?

• a. Essays urging New York to ratify the Constitution ✓
• b. The minutes of the Constitutional Convention
• c. The first ten amendments in draft form
• d. George Washington's collected letters

Eighty-five essays by Hamilton, Madison and Jay, published in New York newspapers in 1787–88 under the pen name 'Publius'.

Who wrote the Federalist Papers?

• a. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay ✓
• b. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams
• c. Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and John Jay
• d. James Madison, George Mason and Patrick Henry

Hamilton wrote the majority, Madison the most famous (10 and 51), and Jay only five, having fallen ill.

Federalist No. 51 is best known for which argument?

• a. 'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition' — structural checks, not virtue, restrain power ✓
• b. A large republic controls the mischief of faction
• c. The judiciary is the least dangerous branch
• d. Standing armies endanger liberty

No. 51 argues that separation of powers works because each branch's officeholders are given the personal motives to resist encroachment. No. 10 makes the large-republic argument; No. 78 calls the judiciary least dangerous.

Who were the Anti-Federalists?

• a. Opponents of ratification who feared a strong central government and wanted a bill of rights ✓
• b. Supporters of ratification who wanted a national bank
• c. A faction inside Washington's cabinet
• d. The delegates who refused to attend the Convention

Patrick Henry, George Mason and others argued the Constitution gave too much away and protected too little; the promise of a bill of rights was the price of ratification.

What is the 'rule of law'?

• a. Everyone must follow the law, including leaders and the government itself ✓
• b. The President decides which laws apply
• c. Congress may exempt itself from laws it passes
• d. Courts may ignore laws they dislike

No one is above the law — the principle that distinguishes a constitutional government from an arbitrary one.

What does 'separation of powers' mean?

• a. Legislative, executive and judicial power are placed in different branches ✓
• b. Federal and state governments have separate budgets
• c. Church and state are kept apart
• d. The two chambers of Congress meet separately

Articles I, II and III vest each kind of power in a different branch, so that no one body both makes and enforces the law.

What is 'popular sovereignty'?

• a. Ultimate political authority rests with the people ✓
• b. The most popular candidate always wins
• c. States may vote to leave the union
• d. The President speaks for the whole nation

It is why the Constitution opens 'We the People' rather than 'We the States' — a deliberate choice at the Convention.

Which principles are structural features written into the Constitution itself?

• a. Separation of powers ✓
• b. Federalism ✓
• c. Checks and balances ✓
• d. Compulsory voting

The first three are built into the text's architecture. The Constitution has never required anyone to vote.

What is a republic, as the Founders used the word?

• a. A government in which power is exercised by representatives elected by the people ✓
• b. A government with no monarch of any kind
• c. A government in which citizens vote directly on every law
• d. A government of states with no national authority

Madison's Federalist No. 10 draws exactly this line: a 'pure democracy' decides in person, a republic 'refines and enlarges' public views through elected representatives.

The word 'democracy' appears in the Constitution.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

It does not. Article IV guarantees each state 'a Republican Form of Government'; the word democracy is absent from both the Constitution and the Declaration.

What does the Guarantee Clause of Article IV promise every state?

• a. A republican form of government, and protection against invasion and domestic violence ✓
• b. Equal representation in the House
• c. A federal judge of its own
• d. An equal share of federal revenue

Article IV, Section 4. Courts have generally treated Guarantee Clause claims as political questions, so it is rarely enforced by litigation.

What is 'limited government'?

• a. The principle that government may act only where it has been granted authority, and no further ✓
• b. The idea that government should be small and cheap
• c. The rule that terms of office must be short
• d. The requirement that budgets be balanced

It is a claim about authority rather than size: the enumerated powers, the Bill of Rights and judicial review are all expressions of it.

What does the Declaration say the people may do when a government becomes destructive of these ends?

• a. Alter or abolish it, and institute new government ✓
• b. Petition the Crown for redress
• c. Elect new representatives at the next opportunity
• d. Appeal to an international tribunal

It also cautions that prudence dictates governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes — the sentence that turns a right of revolution into an argument.

Why did the Constitutional Convention meet in secret?

• a. So delegates could change their minds and compromise without public commitments hardening their positions ✓
• b. Because the Confederation Congress ordered it
• c. To conceal the meeting from Britain
• d. Because Pennsylvania law required closed sessions

Windows were kept shut through a Philadelphia summer. Madison's notes were not published until 1840, four years after his death.

Who was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, and famously the largest?

• a. John Hancock ✓
• b. Thomas Jefferson
• c. Benjamin Franklin
• d. Samuel Adams

As President of the Continental Congress he signed first. His name became a synonym for a signature.

What kind of executive and judiciary did the Articles of Confederation create?

• a. Neither — there was no president and no national court system ✓
• b. A weak president and a single national court
• c. A council of governors and thirteen courts
• d. A president chosen annually and a court of appeals

Congress was the whole of the national government. Enforcement and adjudication were left to the states, which is why so little happened.

What was the Virginia Plan?

• a. Madison's proposal for a strong national government with representation by population in both chambers ✓
• b. A plan for equal representation of every state
• c. A proposal to amend the Articles rather than replace them
• d. A scheme to divide the country into three confederacies

The New Jersey Plan answered it with one chamber and equal state votes; the Great Compromise took one idea from each.

Which prominent delegates refused to sign the finished Constitution?

• a. George Mason, Edmund Randolph and Elbridge Gerry ✓
• b. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
• c. Benjamin Franklin and Gouverneur Morris
• d. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Mason's objection was the absence of a bill of rights. Adams and Jefferson were abroad and not delegates at all.

What is the argument of Federalist No. 10?

• a. A large republic is the best cure for the mischiefs of faction ✓
• b. The judiciary is the least dangerous branch
• c. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition
• d. A standing army endangers liberty

Madison inverts the classical assumption that republics must be small: the wider the republic, the harder it is for any single faction to command a majority.

What does 'federalism' mean?

• a. Power is divided between a national government and constituent state governments, each with its own sphere ✓
• b. All power rests with the national government
• c. States may nullify national law
• d. The government is run by a federation of political parties

Both levels act directly on citizens, which is what distinguishes federalism from the confederation the Articles created.

What is 'social contract' theory, as the Founders used it?

• a. People consent to be governed in exchange for the protection of rights they already hold ✓
• b. Citizens sign an oath of allegiance at adulthood
• c. Government owes every citizen material support
• d. A constitution is a contract between the states only

Locke's version runs straight into the Declaration's second paragraph, including the right to withdraw consent when the bargain fails.

What is the supreme law of the land?

• a. The Constitution ✓
• b. Federal statutes
• c. Supreme Court opinions
• d. State constitutions

Article VI's Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution, and federal law made under it, the supreme law of the land.

How many articles does the Constitution have?

• a. Seven ✓
• b. Ten
• c. Three
• d. Twenty-seven

Seven: Congress, the presidency, the courts, the states, amendment, supremacy, and ratification.

Which article creates the legislative branch?

• a. Article I ✓
• b. Article II
• c. Article III
• d. Article IV

Article I comes first, and is by far the longest — the Founders expected Congress to be the dominant branch.

What does Article IV of the Constitution mainly address?

• a. Relations among the states — full faith and credit, privileges and immunities, new states ✓
• b. The powers of the presidency
• c. The amendment process
• d. The federal judiciary

Article IV is the states' article: recognising each other's records and judgments, extradition, admitting new states, and the Guarantee Clause.

How does the Preamble to the Constitution begin?

• a. We the People ✓
• b. When in the Course of human events
• c. In Congress assembled
• d. We the States

'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…' — the source of the document's claimed authority.

Which purposes are named in the Preamble?

• a. Establish justice ✓
• b. Provide for the common defence ✓
• c. Promote the general welfare ✓
• d. Guarantee full employment

The six stated purposes are a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility, the common defence, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. Employment is not among them.

How many amendments does the Constitution have?

• a. 27 ✓
• b. 26
• c. 10
• d. 33

Twenty-seven, the most recent ratified in 1992 — and first proposed in 1789.

What are the first ten amendments to the Constitution called?

• a. The Bill of Rights ✓
• b. The Reconstruction Amendments
• c. The Articles
• d. The Charter

Ratified together in 1791, they were the condition several states attached to ratifying the Constitution at all.

Which amendment abolished slavery?

• a. The Thirteenth ✓
• b. The Fourteenth
• c. The Fifteenth
• d. The Twelfth

The Thirteenth (1865) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude 'except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted'.

What does the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee?

• a. Birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection under state law ✓
• b. The right to vote regardless of race
• c. The abolition of slavery
• d. Direct election of senators

Section 1 of the Fourteenth (1868) is the workhorse of modern constitutional law; almost every civil-rights case runs through it.

What does the Nineteenth Amendment do?

• a. Prohibits denying the vote on account of sex ✓
• b. Lowers the voting age to eighteen
• c. Abolishes the poll tax
• d. Gives residents of Washington, D.C. electoral votes

Ratified in 1920 after a seventy-year campaign; it bars sex as a qualification rather than granting a right in so many words.

Which amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen?

• a. The Twenty-sixth ✓
• b. The Twenty-fourth
• c. The Twenty-second
• d. The Twenty-third

The Twenty-sixth (1971), ratified in about four months amid the Vietnam draft — the fastest ratification in American history.

What does the Twenty-second Amendment limit?

• a. A President to two elected terms ✓
• b. Senators to two terms
• c. The size of the House
• d. The length of a Supreme Court term

Ratified in 1951 after Franklin Roosevelt's four elections; someone who serves more than two years of another's term may be elected only once more.

What does the Twenty-fifth Amendment establish?

• a. Presidential succession, and the procedure for a President unable to discharge the office ✓
• b. The line of succession after the Vice President
• c. The two-term limit
• d. The date the presidential term begins

Adopted in 1967 after Kennedy's assassination. Section 2 lets a President fill a vacant vice presidency; Sections 3 and 4 handle temporary and contested incapacity.

What is unusual about the Twenty-seventh Amendment?

• a. Proposed in 1789, it was not ratified until 1992 ✓
• b. It was ratified by conventions rather than legislatures
• c. It repealed another amendment
• d. It applies only to the District of Columbia

It delays any congressional pay change until after the next House election. A student's paper on the dormant amendment sparked the campaign that finally ratified it.

Which amendment repealed another amendment outright?

• a. The Twenty-first, repealing Prohibition ✓
• b. The Nineteenth, repealing the Fifteenth
• c. The Sixteenth, repealing the Tenth
• d. The Twenty-fourth, repealing the Fourteenth

The Twenty-first (1933) repealed the Eighteenth. It is also the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures.

What did the Sixteenth Amendment authorise?

• a. A federal income tax without apportionment among the states ✓
• b. Direct election of senators
• c. Federal regulation of alcohol
• d. Women's suffrage

Ratified in 1913, it overrode Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust, which had struck down the income tax as an unapportioned direct tax.

What changed with the Seventeenth Amendment?

• a. Senators are elected by the people rather than chosen by state legislatures ✓
• b. Senate terms became six years
• c. Each state got two senators
• d. The Vice President stopped presiding over the Senate

Ratified in 1913. Before it, state legislatures picked senators, and deadlocked legislatures sometimes left seats empty for months.

How is an amendment normally proposed and ratified?

• a. Two-thirds of both houses of Congress propose it; three-quarters of the states ratify ✓
• b. A majority of Congress proposes it; two-thirds of the states ratify
• c. The President proposes it; Congress ratifies
• d. Three-quarters of the states propose it; Congress ratifies

Article V. All twenty-seven amendments took this route; the alternative — a convention called by two-thirds of the states — has never been used.

The President must sign a constitutional amendment for it to take effect.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

The President has no formal role in Article V at all. Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798) settled the point.

Which provision does Article V place beyond amendment?

• a. Equal suffrage of the states in the Senate, without the state's consent ✓
• b. The Bill of Rights
• c. The Electoral College
• d. The presidential term of four years

Article V's only surviving entrenchment: 'no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate'. Two earlier limits expired in 1808.

What does the Supremacy Clause do?

• a. Makes federal law prevail over conflicting state law ✓
• b. Makes the Supreme Court supreme over Congress
• c. Makes the President supreme in foreign affairs
• d. Makes the Constitution unamendable

Article VI binds state judges to the Constitution and federal law 'any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding'.

What is the Necessary and Proper Clause also called?

• a. The Elastic Clause ✓
• b. The Commerce Clause
• c. The Takings Clause
• d. The Full Faith and Credit Clause

Article I, Section 8's final clause lets Congress make laws needed to carry out its enumerated powers — the hinge of McCulloch v. Maryland.

What does the Commerce Clause give Congress power over?

• a. Commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with Indian tribes ✓
• b. All economic activity within the United States
• c. Only the shipping of goods by sea
• d. State budgets and taxation

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 — the constitutional basis for most modern federal regulation, and the site of the longest-running fight over federal power.

What does the Full Faith and Credit Clause require?

• a. Each state must respect the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state ✓
• b. Each state must extradite fugitives on request
• c. Congress must fund state obligations
• d. Federal courts must follow state precedent

Article IV, Section 1 — the reason a judgment entered in one state is enforceable in the next.

What is a bill of attainder, forbidden by Article I?

• a. A legislative act that punishes a named person without a trial ✓
• b. A law that applies retroactively
• c. A tax on exports from a state
• d. A grant of nobility

Article I, Sections 9 and 10 bar both bills of attainder and ex post facto laws to Congress and to the states — punishment is the courts' job.

Under what condition may the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus be suspended?

• a. In cases of rebellion or invasion, when the public safety requires it ✓
• b. Whenever Congress declares war
• c. At the President's discretion in wartime
• d. It may never be suspended

Article I, Section 9. Its placement in the legislative article is the main reason courts have treated suspension as Congress's call, not the President's.

What is the Equal Rights Amendment?

• a. A proposed amendment barring denial of rights on account of sex, passed by Congress in 1972 and never conclusively ratified ✓
• b. The Nineteenth Amendment's formal name
• c. A 1964 amendment on employment discrimination
• d. An amendment ratified in 1982

Whether the ratification deadline, the late ratifications and the attempted rescissions can be reconciled has never been settled.

What does Article III, Section 3 do that no other article does?

• a. It defines a crime — treason — and sets the evidence required to convict ✓
• b. It creates the office of Attorney General
• c. It sets the size of the Supreme Court
• d. It defines citizenship

Two witnesses to the same overt act, or confession in open court: the Founders had watched treason charges used against political opponents.

What does the Emoluments Clause prohibit?

• a. Federal officeholders accepting presents, offices or titles from foreign states without congressional consent ✓
• b. Members of Congress voting themselves a pay rise
• c. The President holding a second job
• d. Judges receiving speaking fees

Article I, Section 9 covers foreign emoluments; a separate clause in Article II bars the President from receiving emoluments from the United States or any state.

How many amendments has Congress proposed that the states have not ratified?

• a. Six ✓
• b. None
• c. Two
• d. Twenty

Six proposed amendments failed in the states, including the Equal Rights Amendment and the D.C. voting-rights amendment of 1978.

What did the Eighteenth Amendment do?

• a. Prohibited the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating liquors ✓
• b. Gave women the vote
• c. Created the income tax
• d. Abolished the poll tax

In force from 1920, and the only amendment ever repealed — by the Twenty-first, in 1933.

What did the Twentieth Amendment change?

• a. It moved the start of presidential and congressional terms to January, shortening the lame-duck period ✓
• b. It set the two-term limit
• c. It created the office of Vice President
• d. It moved election day to November

Terms had begun in March, a hangover from the era of slow travel; the four-month gap had become dangerous by 1933.

What does the Eleventh Amendment do?

• a. Limits federal-court suits against a state by citizens of another state, the root of state sovereign immunity ✓
• b. Sets the size of the Supreme Court
• c. Guarantees jury trials in civil cases
• d. Restricts congressional pay changes

Ratified in 1795 specifically to overturn Chisholm v. Georgia — the first time an amendment was used to reverse the Court.

How long is the Constitution, compared with other national constitutions?

• a. It is among the shortest still in force, at roughly 4,500 words before the amendments ✓
• b. It is the longest in the world
• c. It runs to about fifty thousand words
• d. It has no fixed text

Its brevity is why so much of American constitutional law lives in judicial interpretation rather than in the text.

What does the Takings Clause require?

• a. That private property not be taken for public use without just compensation ✓
• b. That the government never seize private property
• c. That taxes be apportioned among the states
• d. That land be returned after a public emergency

Fifth Amendment. Kelo v. City of New London (2005) read 'public use' broadly enough to include economic development, and many states narrowed it by statute in response.

What does the Contracts Clause forbid?

• a. States passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts ✓
• b. Congress regulating private contracts
• c. Federal agencies awarding no-bid contracts
• d. States entering contracts with foreign firms

Article I, Section 10. It was one of the most litigated clauses of the nineteenth century, and has been largely eclipsed by due-process doctrine since.

What legal force does the Preamble have?

• a. None on its own — it states purposes but grants no power and creates no right ✓
• b. It grants Congress a general welfare power
• c. It is enforceable in federal court
• d. It overrides conflicting articles

Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) said so directly: the Preamble has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power.

A state may rescind its ratification of a pending constitutional amendment.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

Article V says nothing about it, and it has never been settled. Congress has historically counted rescinding states as having ratified — which is precisely why the Equal Rights Amendment's status is still argued over.

What are the two parts of the United States Congress?

• a. The Senate and the House of Representatives ✓
• b. The House and the Cabinet
• c. The Senate and the Supreme Court
• d. The upper and lower courts

A bicameral legislature: the House apportioned by population, the Senate giving each state two seats.

How many U.S. senators are there?

• a. 100 ✓
• b. 435
• c. 50
• d. 538

Two from each of the fifty states, regardless of population.

How many voting members does the House of Representatives have?

• a. 435 ✓
• b. 100
• c. 538
• d. 218

Fixed at 435 by statute since 1929; the number is not in the Constitution and Congress could change it.

How long is one term for a member of the House of Representatives?

• a. Two years ✓
• b. Four years
• c. Six years
• d. Eight years

The whole House stands for election every two years — the chamber designed to feel public opinion fastest.

How long is one term for a U.S. senator?

• a. Six years ✓
• b. Four years
• c. Two years
• d. Life

Six years, staggered so that roughly a third of the Senate is up at each election.

Who is in charge of the executive branch?

• a. The President ✓
• b. The Speaker of the House
• c. The Chief Justice
• d. The Vice President

Article II vests 'the executive Power' in a President of the United States.

Which powers belong to the Senate alone?

• a. Confirming presidential nominations ✓
• b. Ratifying treaties ✓
• c. Trying impeachments ✓
• d. Originating revenue bills

Advice and consent, treaty ratification by two-thirds, and the impeachment trial are the Senate's. Revenue bills must originate in the House.

Which chamber has the sole power of impeachment?

• a. The House of Representatives ✓
• b. The Senate
• c. Either chamber
• d. The Supreme Court

The House impeaches — the equivalent of an indictment — and the Senate then tries the case, needing two-thirds to convict.

What is the minimum age to be elected a U.S. senator?

• a. 30 ✓
• b. 25
• c. 35
• d. 21

Thirty for the Senate, twenty-five for the House, thirty-five for the presidency — with citizenship and residency requirements alongside.

What is cloture in the Senate?

• a. The motion that ends debate, normally needing sixty votes ✓
• b. The Vice President's tie-breaking vote
• c. A procedure to discharge a bill from committee
• d. The end of a two-year Congress

Rule XXII, adopted in 1917. Since 2013 and 2017 rule changes, nominations need only a simple majority, while legislation still needs sixty.

What is the Speech or Debate Clause?

• a. Members of Congress cannot be questioned elsewhere for anything said in legislative debate ✓
• b. Debate in the Senate may not be limited
• c. The President may address Congress at any time
• d. Committee hearings must be public

Article I, Section 6 protects legislative acts from prosecution or civil suit — an immunity inherited from Parliament's long fight with the Crown.

Who signs bills to become law?

• a. The President ✓
• b. The Speaker of the House
• c. The Chief Justice
• d. The Vice President

Presentment: every bill passed by both chambers goes to the President, who signs it, vetoes it, or lets it become law unsigned.

What majority does Congress need to override a presidential veto?

• a. Two-thirds of both chambers ✓
• b. Three-fifths of both chambers
• c. A simple majority of both chambers
• d. Two-thirds of the Senate only

Article I, Section 7. Overrides are rare: most vetoes stand, which makes the threat of one a bargaining tool.

What is a pocket veto?

• a. A bill dies unsigned because Congress adjourns within the ten-day window ✓
• b. The President returns a bill with objections
• c. A committee refuses to report a bill
• d. The Senate declines to take up a House bill

If Congress has adjourned and so cannot receive a return, an unsigned bill simply fails — and there is nothing to override.

Where must bills for raising revenue originate?

• a. The House of Representatives ✓
• b. The Senate
• c. Either chamber
• d. The Treasury Department

The Origination Clause, Article I, Section 7 — taxation begins in the chamber closest to the people. The Senate may amend such bills freely.

What does a conference committee do?

• a. Reconciles differing House and Senate versions of the same bill ✓
• b. Investigates the executive branch
• c. Schedules floor debate
• d. Reviews nominations before confirmation

A temporary joint committee of members from both chambers; its report must then be approved unamended by each.

How long is one term for the President?

• a. Four years ✓
• b. Two years
• c. Six years
• d. Five years

Four years, with a maximum of two elected terms under the Twenty-second Amendment.

Who becomes President if the President can no longer serve?

• a. The Vice President ✓
• b. The Speaker of the House
• c. The Secretary of State
• d. The Chief Justice

The Twenty-fifth Amendment makes this explicit; the Speaker is next after the Vice President under the Presidential Succession Act.

Who is the Commander in Chief of the military?

• a. The President ✓
• b. The Secretary of Defense
• c. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
• d. Congress

Article II, Section 2. Civilian command of the armed forces is one of the oldest structural commitments in the document.

What are the constitutional requirements to be President?

• a. Natural-born citizen, at least 35, and 14 years a resident of the United States ✓
• b. Citizen for 14 years and at least 30
• c. Natural-born citizen and at least 30
• d. Any citizen over 25 who has held elected office

Article II, Section 1 sets all three: birth citizenship, age thirty-five, and fourteen years' residency.

What is an executive order?

• a. A directive to the executive branch, with force of law only where existing authority supports it ✓
• b. A law passed by Congress at the President's request
• c. A binding instruction to state governors
• d. A ruling that overturns a court decision

It cannot create authority the President does not already have by statute or the Constitution — which is why orders are so often litigated.

What is the limit on the President's pardon power?

• a. It covers federal offences only, and does not extend to impeachment ✓
• b. It requires Senate confirmation
• c. It expires at the end of a term
• d. It cannot be used before conviction

Article II, Section 2. State crimes and impeachments are outside it; a pardon may be granted before charges are ever filed.

What does the Cabinet do?

• a. Advises the President and runs the executive departments ✓
• b. Votes on legislation
• c. Confirms judges
• d. Sets the federal budget

The heads of the executive departments, plus the Vice President and other officials the President designates.

Which of these is a Cabinet-level department?

• a. The Department of Veterans Affairs ✓
• b. The Federal Reserve
• c. The Central Intelligence Agency
• d. The Government Accountability Office

The Fed is an independent central bank, the CIA an independent agency, and the GAO works for Congress.

Which two executive departments were created first, in 1789?

• a. State and War (with Treasury the same year) ✓
• b. Justice and Interior
• c. Commerce and Labor
• d. Defense and Homeland Security

Foreign Affairs (renamed State), War, and Treasury were all established in 1789; the Attorney General's office came the same year, but Justice as a department only in 1870.

What is the highest court in the United States?

• a. The Supreme Court ✓
• b. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• c. The Federal District Court
• d. The Court of International Trade

The only court the Constitution itself creates; every other federal court exists by statute.

How long do federal judges appointed under Article III serve?

• a. During good behaviour — effectively for life ✓
• b. Ten-year renewable terms
• c. Until the age of seventy
• d. For the term of the appointing President

Article III also forbids reducing their salary, so that neither removal nor pay can be used to pressure a ruling.

Which is a check the judiciary holds over the other branches?

• a. Declaring a law or executive action unconstitutional ✓
• b. Vetoing legislation
• c. Impeaching the President
• d. Refusing to fund an agency

Judicial review, established in practice by Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Which checks does Congress hold over the presidency?

• a. Overriding a veto ✓
• b. Controlling appropriations ✓
• c. Impeachment and removal ✓
• d. Vetoing Supreme Court opinions

The power of the purse, the override, and impeachment are all Congress's. No branch can veto a judicial opinion.

The Senate must confirm Supreme Court justices before they take their seats.

• a. True ✓
• b. False

Article II, Section 2's Appointments Clause: the President nominates, and appoints 'by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate'.

What is a filibuster?

• a. Extended debate in the Senate used to block a vote unless sixty senators end it ✓
• b. A House rule limiting amendments
• c. A presidential refusal to spend appropriated funds
• d. A committee's refusal to report a bill

It exists because the Senate never adopted a motion to force a simple-majority vote; the House has one, so it has no filibuster.

What is budget reconciliation?

• a. A fast-track process that limits Senate debate on certain budget bills, so they pass by simple majority ✓
• b. The conference between House and Senate appropriators
• c. The President's signing of the budget
• d. The audit of federal spending after the year ends

The Byrd rule restricts it to provisions with a real budgetary effect, which is why major legislation is often reshaped to fit through it.

What is 'executive privilege'?

• a. A claimed presidential right to withhold certain confidential communications from Congress and the courts ✓
• b. Immunity from all lawsuits while in office
• c. The power to refuse to enforce a law
• d. The right to appoint officials without confirmation

Nowhere in the text. United States v. Nixon recognised it as implicit but held it must yield to a specific need in a criminal case.

Who sets the number of federal judges and courts below the Supreme Court?

• a. Congress, by statute ✓
• b. The Supreme Court
• c. The President
• d. The Judicial Conference

Article III creates only 'one supreme Court' and leaves the rest to 'such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish'.

What did INS v. Chadha strike down in 1983?

• a. The legislative veto — Congress overturning executive action without passing a law ✓
• b. The line-item veto
• c. The independent counsel statute
• d. The War Powers Resolution

Anything with the force of law must pass both chambers and go to the President. Hundreds of statutory provisions fell with it.

Who presides over the Senate, and when may they vote?

• a. The Vice President, who votes only to break a tie ✓
• b. The Speaker, who votes on every measure
• c. The President pro tempore, who never votes
• d. The Majority Leader, who votes last

In practice the chair is usually held by a junior senator; the Vice President appears when a tie is expected.

What does a congressional committee do?

• a. Considers and amends bills before the full chamber sees them, and conducts oversight ✓
• b. Votes on final passage in place of the chamber
• c. Confirms judicial nominees on its own authority
• d. Writes the federal budget without floor approval

Most bills die in committee. Woodrow Wilson called it 'government by the chairmen of the Standing Committees of Congress'.

What is congressional oversight?

• a. Congress's review of how the executive branch implements the laws it passes, through hearings, subpoenas and the purse ✓
• b. The Supreme Court's review of statutes
• c. An inspector general's audit of a single agency
• d. The President's supervision of the Cabinet

Not named in the Constitution; the Court has treated it as implicit in the legislative power, and its limits are contested every few years.

What happens if the President neither signs nor vetoes a bill while Congress is in session?

• a. It becomes law after ten days, Sundays excepted ✓
• b. It is vetoed automatically
• c. It returns to the chamber where it originated
• d. It lapses at the end of the session

Article I, Section 7. It is how a President lets something become law without endorsing it.

What is the order of presidential succession after the Vice President?

• a. Speaker of the House, then President pro tempore of the Senate, then the Secretary of State ✓
• b. Secretary of State, then Speaker of the House
• c. Chief Justice, then Speaker of the House
• d. Senate Majority Leader, then Speaker of the House

Set by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947; the Cabinet then follows in order of each department's creation.

What role does the Senate play in treaties?

• a. It must consent by a two-thirds vote before a treaty is ratified ✓
• b. It ratifies treaties by simple majority
• c. It has no role; treaties are executive acts
• d. It reviews treaties only after they take effect

The threshold is high enough that much international agreement now takes the form of executive agreements instead.

What is an independent regulatory agency?

• a. An agency whose commissioners serve fixed terms and cannot be removed at will by the President ✓
• b. An agency funded by the states
• c. An agency outside the reach of the courts
• d. A Cabinet department with no secretary

Humphrey's Executor (1935) upheld the arrangement; recent cases have narrowed it, and the removal power is again contested.

What did Clinton v. City of New York decide in 1998?

• a. The line-item veto is unconstitutional, because the President cannot amend a law unilaterally ✓
• b. The pocket veto is unconstitutional
• c. The President may impound appropriated funds
• d. The President may cancel treaties without the Senate

Presentment allows a bill to be signed or vetoed whole. Giving the President a pen to strike parts of it would make him a legislator.

What is one right guaranteed by the First Amendment?

• a. Freedom of speech ✓
• b. The right to a jury trial
• c. The right to bear arms
• d. Protection from unreasonable searches

The First Amendment covers religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — five freedoms in one sentence.

Which freedoms does the First Amendment protect?

• a. Religion ✓
• b. Assembly ✓
• c. Petitioning the government ✓
• d. Voting

Religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. Voting rights come from later amendments — the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth.

What does the Second Amendment address?

• a. A well regulated militia and the right to keep and bear arms ✓
• b. Quartering of soldiers
• c. Freedom from unreasonable searches
• d. Excessive bail

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) read it as protecting an individual right unconnected to militia service.

What does the Third Amendment prohibit?

• a. Quartering soldiers in private homes in peacetime without consent ✓
• b. Standing armies
• c. Military trials of civilians
• d. Conscription

A direct response to the Quartering Acts. It is the least-litigated amendment in the Bill of Rights.

What does the Ninth Amendment say?

• a. Listing some rights does not deny others retained by the people ✓
• b. Powers not delegated are reserved to the states
• c. Rights may not be abridged by the states
• d. Trial by jury is preserved in civil cases

Madison's answer to the objection that a written list of rights implies the government may do everything not listed.

What does the Tenth Amendment reserve?

• a. Powers not delegated to the United States, to the states or to the people ✓
• b. The right to a grand jury
• c. The right of the states to secede
• d. Congressional power over commerce

The textual anchor of federalism, though the Court has often called it 'a truism' about what the rest of the document already implies.

Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, when may the government punish advocacy of illegal action?

• a. When it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it ✓
• b. When it creates a clear and present danger of any kind
• c. When a reasonable listener would find it offensive
• d. When it advocates the overthrow of the government in the abstract

The 1969 test replaced the looser 'clear and present danger' standard, and is deliberately hard for the government to meet.

What is 'prior restraint'?

• a. Government action stopping speech before it is published ✓
• b. Punishment after publication
• c. A libel judgment against a newspaper
• d. A court order sealing evidence from a jury

It carries a heavy presumption of unconstitutionality — the point of New York Times Co. v. United States, the Pentagon Papers case.

What must a public official prove to win a defamation suit under New York Times v. Sullivan?

• a. Actual malice — knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth ✓
• b. That the statement was false
• c. That the publisher was negligent
• d. That the statement caused financial loss

The 1964 decision protects 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open' debate about officials, even when some of it is wrong.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, what did the Court hold about students?

• a. They do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate ✓
• b. Schools may regulate all student expression
• c. Students may be punished for any political symbol
• d. School speech is entirely outside the First Amendment

Students wearing black armbands to protest Vietnam could not be disciplined absent substantial disruption.

What are the First Amendment's two religion clauses?

• a. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause ✓
• b. The Separation Clause and the Worship Clause
• c. The Conscience Clause and the Assembly Clause
• d. The Establishment Clause and the Petition Clause

One forbids the government from establishing religion; the other protects practising it. They pull against each other constantly.

The phrase 'separation of church and state' appears in the Constitution.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

It comes from Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, later quoted by the Supreme Court. The text says only that Congress shall make no law 'respecting an establishment of religion'.

What does the Fourth Amendment protect against?

• a. Unreasonable searches and seizures ✓
• b. Self-incrimination
• c. Cruel and unusual punishment
• d. Being tried twice for the same offence

It also requires that warrants issue only on probable cause, describing the place and things with particularity.

Which protections does the Fifth Amendment provide?

• a. Protection from self-incrimination ✓
• b. Protection from double jeopardy ✓
• c. Due process of law ✓
• d. The right to a speedy trial

The Fifth also requires grand jury indictment for serious federal crimes and just compensation for takings. The speedy trial right is in the Sixth.

Which amendment guarantees the right to counsel in a criminal prosecution?

• a. The Sixth ✓
• b. The Fifth
• c. The Fourth
• d. The Eighth

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) applied it to the states, requiring appointed counsel for defendants who cannot afford one.

What did Miranda v. Arizona require?

• a. Warnings about the right to silence and to counsel before custodial interrogation ✓
• b. A written confession in every felony case
• c. Counsel at every traffic stop
• d. A jury of twelve in all state trials

The 1966 decision grounds the warnings in the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

What does the Eighth Amendment forbid?

• a. Excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments ✓
• b. Warrantless searches
• c. Trials without a jury
• d. Retroactive criminal laws

Its language is borrowed almost verbatim from the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

What is the exclusionary rule?

• a. Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is generally inadmissible ✓
• b. Hearsay may not be admitted at trial
• c. A jury may not hear about a prior conviction
• d. A confession must be corroborated

Mapp v. Ohio (1961) extended it to state prosecutions; later cases carved out good-faith and inevitable-discovery exceptions.

What did Brown v. Board of Education decide?

• a. Racially segregated public schools are unconstitutional ✓
• b. Segregation is permissible if facilities are equal
• c. Busing may be ordered to desegregate schools
• d. Affirmative action in admissions is lawful

The unanimous 1954 decision held that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal', overturning Plessy v. Ferguson in the school context.

What doctrine did Plessy v. Ferguson establish in 1896?

• a. 'Separate but equal' ✓
• b. 'One person, one vote'
• c. 'Clear and present danger'
• d. 'Strict scrutiny'

Upholding segregated railway cars, over Justice Harlan's lone dissent that 'our Constitution is color-blind'.

What is 'strict scrutiny'?

• a. The standard requiring a compelling interest and narrow tailoring, applied to suspect classifications and fundamental rights ✓
• b. The default standard for all economic regulation
• c. The standard for reviewing agency fact-finding
• d. The threshold for granting certiorari

The most demanding tier of equal-protection review; rational-basis review sits at the other end, and intermediate scrutiny in between.

What did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 do?

• a. Banned discrimination in public accommodations and employment on grounds including race, colour, religion, sex and national origin ✓
• b. Guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race
• c. Ended school segregation by court order
• d. Created the Equal Rights Amendment

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 handled voting; the 1964 Act reached restaurants, hotels, schools and workplaces.

Where did Griswold v. Connecticut locate a constitutional right to privacy?

• a. In penumbras formed by emanations from several enumerated guarantees ✓
• b. In the Ninth Amendment alone
• c. In the Commerce Clause
• d. In the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV

Justice Douglas's 1965 opinion drew the zone of privacy from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments together.

What is 'incorporation'?

• a. Applying Bill of Rights protections against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment ✓
• b. Chartering a corporation under state law
• c. Adding a territory to the union
• d. Merging two federal agencies

Barron v. Baltimore (1833) held the Bill of Rights bound only the federal government; incorporation happened piecemeal, case by case, across the twentieth century.

Which categories of speech receive little or no First Amendment protection?

• a. Incitement to imminent lawless action ✓
• b. True threats ✓
• c. Child sexual abuse material ✓
• d. Offensive political opinion

The unprotected categories are narrow and historically defined. Offensiveness is not one of them — that is close to the point of the doctrine.

What is the difference between de jure and de facto segregation?

• a. De jure segregation is imposed by law; de facto segregation arises in practice without a law requiring it ✓
• b. De jure applies to schools, de facto to housing
• c. De jure is federal, de facto is local
• d. De jure is intentional, de facto is always accidental

Courts have found the first far easier to reach than the second, which is much of why segregation outlived the statutes that created it.

What does 'due process' require, in its procedural sense?

• a. Notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard before the government deprives you of life, liberty or property ✓
• b. That every law be reasonable in substance
• c. That trials be held within sixty days
• d. That a jury be unanimous

Substantive due process is the separate, more contested idea that some deprivations are forbidden however fair the procedure.

What did Katz v. United States change about the Fourth Amendment?

• a. It protects people rather than places, wherever there is a reasonable expectation of privacy ✓
• b. It applies only where there is a physical trespass
• c. It requires a warrant for every search
• d. It excludes electronic surveillance entirely

The 1967 decision on a public phone booth replaced the older trespass test, and is the reason wiretapping needs a warrant.

What does the Seventh Amendment preserve?

• a. The right to a jury trial in federal civil cases above a threshold ✓
• b. The right to counsel in civil cases
• c. Protection against excessive fines
• d. The right to confront witnesses

Its twenty-dollar threshold has never been adjusted, and it is one of the few Bill of Rights provisions never incorporated against the states.

What phrase from Schenck v. United States is most often quoted, and what replaced it?

• a. 'Clear and present danger', superseded by Brandenburg's imminent-lawless-action test ✓
• b. 'Fighting words', superseded by the overbreadth doctrine
• c. 'Actual malice', superseded by negligence
• d. 'Prior restraint', superseded by strict scrutiny

Holmes's 1919 opinion also produced the falsely-shouting-fire line, which is quoted far more often than the case it came from is read.

What did Engel v. Vitale decide in 1962?

• a. Official prayer written by a state and recited in public schools violates the Establishment Clause ✓
• b. Students may not pray in school at all
• c. Schools may require a moment of silence
• d. Religious schools may not receive any public funds

It bars state-composed, state-sponsored prayer — not private prayer by students, a distinction the decision is regularly misreported as erasing.

What did Employment Division v. Smith hold about religious exemptions?

• a. A neutral, generally applicable law does not violate free exercise merely because it burdens a religious practice ✓
• b. Any burden on religion requires a compelling interest
• c. Religious exemptions are constitutionally required
• d. States may not regulate religious conduct at all

Congress answered the 1990 decision with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, restoring a stricter test by statute for federal law.

What did Terry v. Ohio permit?

• a. A brief stop and pat-down on reasonable suspicion, short of the probable cause a search normally needs ✓
• b. A warrantless search of a home
• c. Indefinite detention without charge
• d. A search of any vehicle stopped for a traffic offence

The 1968 decision created the 'stop and frisk' category, and with it most of the modern law of street policing.

What does the Confrontation Clause guarantee?

• a. The right of a criminal defendant to be confronted with the witnesses against him ✓
• b. The right to address the jury personally
• c. The right to a public trial
• d. The right to face one's accuser before charges are filed

Sixth Amendment. Crawford v. Washington (2004) revived it, sharply limiting the use of out-of-court statements against a defendant.

How did Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

• a. Under the Commerce Clause, because discrimination in public accommodations burdened interstate travel ✓
• b. Under the Fourteenth Amendment's state-action requirement
• c. Under the Thirteenth Amendment
• d. Under Congress's taxing power

Reaching private businesses through commerce sidestepped the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, which had held the Fourteenth Amendment reaches only state action.

What did Obergefell v. Hodges hold in 2015?

• a. The Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license and recognise same-sex marriages ✓
• b. States may define marriage as they choose
• c. Civil unions satisfy equal protection
• d. Marriage is exclusively a matter of federal law

Decided on due process and equal protection together, two years after United States v. Windsor struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

What did Gitlow v. New York begin in 1925?

• a. The incorporation of the First Amendment against the states through the Fourteenth ✓
• b. The exclusionary rule
• c. The clear and present danger test
• d. The right to counsel in state courts

Gitlow lost his case, but the Court assumed free speech was among the liberties the Fourteenth Amendment protects — and incorporation proceeded from there.

How many justices are on the Supreme Court?

• a. Nine ✓
• b. Seven
• c. Twelve
• d. Thirteen

Nine since 1869 — but the number is set by statute, and has ranged from five to ten over the Court's history.

What are the three levels of the federal court system?

• a. District courts, courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court ✓
• b. Municipal, state and federal courts
• c. Trial, appellate and constitutional courts
• d. Magistrate, circuit and supreme courts

Ninety-four district courts feed thirteen courts of appeals, which feed the Supreme Court.

How many federal courts of appeals (circuits) are there?

• a. Thirteen ✓
• b. Eleven
• c. Nine
• d. Twelve

Eleven numbered circuits, plus the D.C. Circuit and the Federal Circuit, which hears patent and certain claims appeals nationwide.

What is the difference between original and appellate jurisdiction?

• a. Original jurisdiction is the power to hear a case first; appellate is the power to review a lower court's decision ✓
• b. Original applies to federal law, appellate to state law
• c. Original belongs to juries, appellate to judges
• d. Original applies to civil cases, appellate to criminal ones

The Supreme Court's original jurisdiction is narrow — cases involving states and ambassadors — and nearly all its work is appellate.

What is judicial review?

• a. The power of courts to strike down laws and acts that conflict with the Constitution ✓
• b. The Senate's review of judicial nominees
• c. An appeal from a district court
• d. The Court's annual review of its own precedents

Not stated in the text; Marbury v. Madison (1803) established it, and the practice has been accepted ever since.

Which case established judicial review?

• a. Marbury v. Madison (1803) ✓
• b. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
• c. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
• d. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Chief Justice Marshall declined a power the statute gave him in order to claim a far larger one: 'It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'

What did McCulloch v. Maryland establish?

• a. Implied federal powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause, and that states may not tax federal instrumentalities ✓
• b. That the federal government may regulate all commerce
• c. That treaties override state law
• d. That the President may remove executive officers at will

Marshall's 1819 opinion upheld the Bank of the United States: 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy'.

What did Gibbons v. Ogden decide in 1824?

• a. Congress's commerce power reaches interstate navigation, overriding a state-granted monopoly ✓
• b. States may regulate interstate shipping within their waters
• c. Steamboats are outside federal jurisdiction
• d. Only Congress may charter corporations

The first great Commerce Clause case, and the source of the broad reading of 'commerce' that later Congresses relied on.

What did United States v. Nixon hold?

• a. Executive privilege is not absolute and yields to a criminal subpoena ✓
• b. A sitting President cannot be subpoenaed
• c. Presidential records belong to the President personally
• d. Impeachment is a non-justiciable political question

The unanimous 1974 decision ordered the release of the White House tapes; Nixon resigned sixteen days later.

What did Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer decide?

• a. The President could not seize steel mills without congressional authorisation ✓
• b. Wartime seizures are entirely within executive power
• c. Labour disputes are outside federal jurisdiction
• d. The President may impound appropriated funds

Justice Jackson's concurrence — presidential power at its maximum with Congress, at its lowest ebb against it — is now the standard framework for separation-of-powers disputes.

What was decided in Korematsu v. United States, and what happened to it?

• a. It upheld Japanese American internment; the Court repudiated it in Trump v. Hawaii (2018) ✓
• b. It struck down internment as unconstitutional
• c. It established the internment camps by court order
• d. It has never been addressed by the Court since

The 1944 decision is one of the Court's most criticised. In 2018 Chief Justice Roberts wrote that Korematsu 'was gravely wrong the day it was decided' and 'has no place in law under the Constitution'.

What did Marbury, McCulloch and Gibbons have in common?

• a. All three were decided by the Marshall Court ✓
• b. All three concerned slavery
• c. All three were unanimous reversals
• d. All three were decided after the Civil War

John Marshall was Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835, and used these three cases to establish judicial review, implied powers and a broad commerce power.

What is a writ of certiorari?

• a. The order by which the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case ✓
• b. A ruling on the merits of a case
• c. An order releasing a prisoner
• d. A dissent from a denial of review

The Court receives thousands of petitions a term and grants roughly one percent of them.

What is the 'rule of four'?

• a. Four justices must vote to grant certiorari for a case to be heard ✓
• b. Four justices must agree for a decision to be binding
• c. Four circuits must split before the Court will intervene
• d. Four weeks must pass before an opinion is released

An internal practice, not a rule of law: it stops a bare majority from controlling the docket as well as the outcome.

What is a dissenting opinion?

• a. An opinion by a justice who disagrees with the Court's judgment ✓
• b. An opinion agreeing with the result but not the reasoning
• c. The controlling opinion when no view has a majority
• d. An unsigned opinion of the Court

A concurrence agrees with the result on different grounds; a plurality opinion controls when no reasoning commands five votes.

What is an amicus curiae brief?

• a. A brief filed by someone who is not a party, offering the court a wider view ✓
• b. The petitioner's opening brief
• c. A brief filed under seal
• d. The Solicitor General's mandatory filing in every case

Literally 'friend of the court'. Major cases now attract dozens, from states, industries and scholars.

Supreme Court proceedings are televised.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

The Court has never allowed cameras. Since 2020 it has released live audio of argument, and same-day audio recordings and transcripts.

What is 'stare decisis'?

• a. The principle that courts follow their own prior decisions ✓
• b. The rule that lower courts may ignore precedent
• c. The requirement that opinions be published
• d. The doctrine that avoids constitutional questions where possible

'To stand by things decided.' It is a strong presumption rather than an absolute rule — Brown overruled Plessy, and Lawrence overruled Bowers.

What does 'standing' require of a plaintiff in federal court?

• a. A concrete injury, traceable to the defendant, that a ruling can redress ✓
• b. A financial stake of at least $75,000
• c. Residence in the district where suit is filed
• d. Support from at least one state attorney general

Standing keeps Article III courts to 'cases and controversies' rather than advisory opinions on laws nobody has been hurt by.

What is diversity jurisdiction?

• a. A federal court's authority over suits between citizens of different states above a threshold amount ✓
• b. A requirement that juries reflect the community
• c. Jurisdiction over civil rights claims
• d. A rule assigning cases among circuits

Article III extends federal power to controversies 'between Citizens of different States'; the current statutory threshold is $75,000.

Where do most criminal cases in the United States begin?

• a. In state courts, which handle the overwhelming majority of prosecutions ✓
• b. In federal district courts
• c. In the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction
• d. In federal magistrate courts

The federal system handles a small fraction of criminal cases; nearly all everyday crime is a matter of state law.

What did Loving v. Virginia decide?

• a. State bans on interracial marriage violate equal protection and due process ✓
• b. Marriage is entirely a matter of state law
• c. The Fourteenth Amendment does not reach family law
• d. Antimiscegenation laws were valid if applied evenly

The 1967 decision struck down Virginia's law; the Court rejected the argument that punishing both spouses equally made the ban neutral.

What did Chevron v. NRDC establish, and what became of it?

• a. Deference to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes; overruled in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) ✓
• b. That agencies may not interpret statutes at all
• c. That courts must defer to agencies on questions of fact only
• d. That agency rules require congressional approval

For forty years Chevron deference shaped administrative law. Loper Bright returned statutory interpretation to the courts.

How is a Supreme Court justice removed from office?

• a. By impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate ✓
• b. By a majority vote of the other justices
• c. By presidential order
• d. By reaching a mandatory retirement age

Only one justice has ever been impeached — Samuel Chase, in 1804 — and the Senate acquitted him.

What is the 'shadow docket'?

• a. The Court's emergency and summary orders, decided quickly and often without full briefing or signed opinions ✓
• b. Cases the Court declines to hear
• c. Sealed cases involving national security
• d. The internal conference schedule

The label is a critic's coinage; the Court calls them emergency applications. Their growing consequence is a live controversy.

What did Wickard v. Filburn decide about the commerce power?

• a. Congress may regulate purely local activity whose aggregate effect on interstate commerce is substantial ✓
• b. Congress may regulate only goods that cross state lines
• c. Farming is outside federal regulation
• d. States may set their own agricultural quotas

Wheat grown for a farmer's own use still counted, because if everyone did it the national market would shift. It marks the outer edge of the commerce power.

Why was United States v. Lopez significant in 1995?

• a. It was the first time in nearly sixty years the Court struck down a federal law as exceeding the commerce power ✓
• b. It upheld the Gun-Free School Zones Act
• c. It expanded the commerce power to education
• d. It overruled Wickard v. Filburn

Carrying a gun near a school was not economic activity. The decision announced that the commerce power has judicially enforceable limits after all.

What did Shelby County v. Holder do to the Voting Rights Act?

• a. It struck down the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions needed federal preclearance ✓
• b. It repealed the Act entirely
• c. It extended preclearance to every state
• d. It upheld the Act without change

Section 5 survives in form but has no jurisdictions to apply to, because the formula naming them was held outdated.

How does a case normally reach the Supreme Court?

• a. By petition for certiorari after a federal court of appeals or a state's highest court has ruled ✓
• b. By direct appeal from any trial court
• c. By referral from Congress
• d. By request of the President

A handful of cases arrive under the Court's original jurisdiction, and a few by mandatory appeal, but certiorari is the road almost every case takes.

What happens when the Supreme Court splits four to four?

• a. The lower court's judgment stands, without setting national precedent ✓
• b. The case is dismissed outright
• c. The Chief Justice casts a second vote
• d. The case is sent to a court of appeals

It happens when a seat is vacant or a justice is recused, and it decides the parties' dispute without deciding the law.

What does an en banc hearing mean in a federal court of appeals?

• a. The full court rehears a case normally decided by a three-judge panel ✓
• b. Two circuits sit together
• c. The court sits with a jury
• d. A single judge decides without argument

It is how a circuit resolves conflicts among its own panels — and often the last stop before a certiorari petition.

How can Congress or the states respond to a decision they disagree with?

• a. By passing a new statute where the ruling turned on statutory interpretation, or amending the Constitution where it did not ✓
• b. By a two-thirds vote overruling the Court
• c. By refusing to publish the opinion
• d. By removing the justices in the majority

The Eleventh, Fourteenth, Sixteenth and Twenty-sixth Amendments each reversed a Supreme Court decision.

What is the Solicitor General's role?

• a. To represent the United States before the Supreme Court and decide which losses the government will appeal ✓
• b. To advise the President on judicial nominations
• c. To prosecute federal crimes
• d. To administer the federal courts

Sometimes called the tenth justice, for how often the office appears and how much weight its views carry.

What is one power of the federal government?

• a. To print money ✓
• b. To issue driver's licences
• c. To run public schools
• d. To conduct local elections

Coining money, declaring war, making treaties and regulating interstate commerce are federal. Licences, schools and elections are administered by the states.

Which of these are powers of the states?

• a. Providing schooling and education ✓
• b. Issuing driver's licences ✓
• c. Zoning and land use ✓
• d. Declaring war

War powers belong to Congress alone; the rest are classic state and local responsibilities.

What are 'concurrent powers'?

• a. Powers held by both the federal and state governments, such as taxing ✓
• b. Powers the Constitution forbids to both
• c. Powers exercised only during emergencies
• d. Powers delegated by treaty

Taxing, borrowing, building roads, and establishing courts are all exercised at both levels.

What are 'enumerated' powers?

• a. Powers explicitly listed in the Constitution, chiefly in Article I, Section 8 ✓
• b. Powers inferred from the Necessary and Proper Clause
• c. Powers reserved to the states
• d. Powers shared with foreign governments by treaty

Implied powers come from the Necessary and Proper Clause; inherent powers, mostly in foreign affairs, from sovereignty itself.

What is federal preemption?

• a. Federal law displacing conflicting or overlapping state law ✓
• b. A federal takeover of a state agency
• c. Congress vetoing a state statute
• d. A state refusing to enforce a federal law

It flows from the Supremacy Clause, and can be express in a statute or implied where federal regulation occupies the field.

What is the anti-commandeering doctrine?

• a. Congress may not compel states to enact or administer a federal regulatory programme ✓
• b. States may not tax federal property
• c. The President may not federalise the National Guard
• d. Federal courts may not hear state-law claims

New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997). Congress can regulate directly, or attach conditions to funds — it just cannot conscript state governments.

Who is the head of a state government?

• a. The governor ✓
• b. The mayor
• c. The state senator
• d. The attorney general

Each state elects its own governor, who heads the state's executive branch.

Which state has a unicameral legislature?

• a. Nebraska ✓
• b. Vermont
• c. Alaska
• d. Rhode Island

Nebraska's single chamber, adopted in 1937, is also officially nonpartisan.

What is a ballot initiative?

• a. A process letting citizens place a proposed law directly on the ballot ✓
• b. A legislature's referral of a constitutional amendment
• c. A petition to remove an elected official
• d. A primary election for a party nomination

Roughly half the states allow initiatives. A referendum asks voters to approve or reject something the legislature has already acted on; a recall removes an official.

How do most state constitutions differ from the federal one?

• a. They are far longer, more detailed, and much more frequently amended ✓
• b. They are shorter and harder to amend
• c. They contain no bill of rights
• d. They are enacted by Congress

Alabama's constitution has been amended nearly a thousand times. Many state constitutions also protect rights the federal one does not.

Which level of government usually runs public schools, police and fire services?

• a. Local government ✓
• b. The federal government
• c. The Supreme Court
• d. The Department of Education

Cities, counties and school districts, funded mostly by local property taxes and state aid.

What is Dillon's Rule?

• a. Local governments have only the powers their state expressly grants them ✓
• b. Cities may exercise any power not forbidden by the state
• c. Counties may override municipal ordinances
• d. Local elections must be nonpartisan

Its opposite is 'home rule', where a state constitution grants localities broad self-governing authority. Most states mix the two.

What is the legal status of federally recognised tribes?

• a. Domestic dependent nations with inherent sovereignty and a government-to-government relationship with the United States ✓
• b. Federal agencies within the Department of the Interior
• c. Political subdivisions of the states they sit in
• d. Private membership organisations

The phrase comes from Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831). Tribes retain powers of self-government that predate the Constitution.

Do residents of Puerto Rico vote for President in the general election?

• a. No — the territory has no electoral votes, though its residents are U.S. citizens ✓
• b. Yes, with three electoral votes
• c. Yes, but only in primaries and the general election since 1952
• d. No, because residents are not citizens

Puerto Ricans have been citizens since 1917 and vote in presidential primaries, but the territory has no electors and only a non-voting Resident Commissioner in the House.

How many electoral votes does the District of Columbia have?

• a. Three ✓
• b. None
• c. Five
• d. Two

The Twenty-third Amendment (1961) gives D.C. as many electors as the least populous state — three — but no voting representation in Congress.

A state may enter into a treaty with a foreign nation if Congress consents.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

Article I, Section 10 flatly forbids states to enter 'any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation'. States may make lesser agreements or compacts with congressional consent — but not treaties.

What is an interstate compact?

• a. An agreement between states, generally requiring congressional consent ✓
• b. A federal grant programme shared by states
• c. A treaty between a state and a tribe
• d. A model law adopted by every state

Compacts run everything from port authorities to water allocation on shared rivers.

What is the state equivalent of the President's veto?

• a. The governor's veto, which in most states includes a line-item veto over spending ✓
• b. A referendum
• c. A recall election
• d. An executive order

Most governors can strike individual spending lines; the President cannot — the Court struck down the federal line-item veto in Clinton v. City of New York (1998).

Who fills a U.S. Senate vacancy between elections?

• a. Usually a temporary appointee named by the governor, until a special election ✓
• b. The state legislature, by majority vote
• c. The Senate itself, by appointment
• d. The seat stays empty until the next general election

The Seventeenth Amendment lets a legislature empower its governor to appoint; a few states require a special election instead.

What is a school board?

• a. A locally elected or appointed body governing a public school district ✓
• b. A state agency that licenses teachers
• c. A committee of the Department of Education
• d. A body that writes the national curriculum

There is no national curriculum. Roughly thirteen thousand districts set policy locally, within state law.

What is a special district?

• a. A unit of local government created for a single purpose, such as water, transit or fire protection ✓
• b. A congressional district drawn after a court order
• c. A federal enclave inside a state
• d. A county with no incorporated towns

They are the most numerous form of local government in the country, and often the least noticed on a ballot.

How does Congress influence policy in areas it cannot regulate directly?

• a. By attaching conditions to federal funding the states may accept or refuse ✓
• b. By instructing governors to legislate
• c. By vetoing state laws
• d. By appointing state officials

South Dakota v. Dole (1987) upheld withholding highway funds from states with a drinking age under 21; NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) held that conditions can become unconstitutionally coercive.

What is the dormant Commerce Clause?

• a. The inference that Congress's commerce power itself limits state laws that discriminate against interstate commerce ✓
• b. A commerce power Congress has never exercised
• c. The rule that commerce law lapses without reauthorisation
• d. Congress's power over commerce during a recess

It is a judicial inference rather than a clause: states may not use their own laws to wall off their markets.

What are 'police powers' in constitutional law?

• a. The states' general authority over health, safety, morals and welfare ✓
• b. The federal power to run law enforcement agencies
• c. A city's authority over its police department
• d. Emergency powers during a declared disaster

It is why public health, criminal law, education and licensing are overwhelmingly state matters — the federal government has no general police power.

How do most state judiciaries differ from the federal judiciary?

• a. Many state judges are elected or face retention elections rather than serving for life ✓
• b. State judges are appointed by the President
• c. State courts have no appellate level
• d. State judges must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate

The great majority of American judges face voters in some form — a structural difference the federal system deliberately avoided.

What is a 'laboratory of democracy'?

• a. Justice Brandeis's description of a state trying a novel policy without risk to the rest of the country ✓
• b. A federal pilot programme run in one state
• c. A university centre studying elections
• d. A constitutional convention held by a state

From his dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932), and now the standard argument for leaving policy room to the states.

What is a county?

• a. An administrative subdivision of a state, usually running courts, records, elections and sheriffs ✓
• b. A city with more than 100,000 residents
• c. A federal district within a state
• d. A group of adjacent school districts

Louisiana calls them parishes and Alaska boroughs. In some states counties do very little; in others they run most public services.

Which court system generally has jurisdiction over crimes by tribal members on tribal land?

• a. Tribal courts and, for major crimes, federal courts — with state jurisdiction the exception ✓
• b. State courts in every case
• c. Only federal courts
• d. Only tribal courts

The Major Crimes Act, Public Law 280 and McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) make this one of the most tangled jurisdictional maps in American law.

How is the District of Columbia governed?

• a. By an elected mayor and council, under Congress's ultimate authority over the district ✓
• b. As the fifty-first state
• c. Directly by a federal commission
• d. By the state of Maryland

Home rule dates from 1973, and Congress retains the power to review and overturn the council's legislation.

What is nullification, and what is its constitutional status?

• a. The claim that a state may declare a federal law void within its borders — rejected by the courts and settled by the Civil War ✓
• b. A recognised state power under the Tenth Amendment
• c. A procedure requiring Supreme Court approval
• d. The Senate's power to void a regulation

Cooper v. Aaron (1958) restated the point unanimously, with all nine justices signing the opinion individually.

How does a territory become a state?

• a. Congress admits it by statute, under Article IV, on whatever conditions it sets ✓
• b. By a majority vote of its residents alone
• c. By ratification of three-quarters of the existing states
• d. By presidential proclamation

Article IV, Section 3 also forbids carving a new state out of an existing one without that state's consent — which is why West Virginia's admission remains contested history.

At what age may a U.S. citizen vote in federal elections?

• a. 18 ✓
• b. 21
• c. 16
• d. 25

The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) set eighteen; before it, most states required twenty-one.

Which amendment prohibits denying the vote on account of race?

• a. The Fifteenth ✓
• b. The Fourteenth
• c. The Thirteenth
• d. The Nineteenth

Ratified in 1870. It was widely evaded for nearly a century by poll taxes, literacy tests and violence, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment abolish?

• a. The poll tax in federal elections ✓
• b. Literacy tests
• c. Property qualifications for office
• d. At-large congressional districts

Ratified in 1964. Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections extended the ban to state elections two years later.

What did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 do?

• a. Banned literacy tests and put discriminatory jurisdictions under federal oversight ✓
• b. Gave women the vote
• c. Lowered the voting age
• d. Created the Federal Election Commission

Shelby County v. Holder (2013) struck down the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions needed federal preclearance.

When are federal elections for Congress held?

• a. The Tuesday after the first Monday in November, in even-numbered years ✓
• b. The first Tuesday of November, every year
• c. The first Monday in November, in even-numbered years
• d. A date each state chooses

Set by federal statute in 1845, when the date had to suit farmers, market day and Sunday worship.

Who administers elections in the United States?

• a. State and local election officials, under state law and federal minimum standards ✓
• b. The Federal Election Commission
• c. The Department of Justice
• d. The Election Assistance Commission

There is no national election authority. Over ten thousand local jurisdictions run elections; the EAC sets voluntary standards and the FEC handles campaign finance.

How many electoral votes are there in total?

• a. 538 ✓
• b. 535
• c. 435
• d. 500

435 representatives plus 100 senators plus 3 for the District of Columbia. A majority — 270 — wins.

How many electoral votes are needed to win the presidency?

• a. 270 ✓
• b. 269
• c. 300
• d. 218

An absolute majority of 538. A 269–269 tie throws the election to the House, voting by state delegation.

How is a state's number of electors determined?

• a. Its number of representatives plus its two senators ✓
• b. Its population divided by one million
• c. Its share of the national popular vote
• d. An equal number for every state

Which is why the smallest states are over-represented: every state gets at least three electors regardless of size.

Which two states do not award all their electors to the statewide winner?

• a. Maine and Nebraska ✓
• b. Alaska and Hawaii
• c. Vermont and Wyoming
• d. Rhode Island and Delaware

Both split by congressional district, awarding two electors to the statewide winner and one per district.

What did the Twelfth Amendment change?

• a. Electors cast separate ballots for President and Vice President ✓
• b. Electors are chosen by popular vote
• c. The winner of the popular vote becomes President
• d. The Vice President is chosen by the Senate

Ratified in 1804 after the 1800 deadlock between Jefferson and Burr, who had tied because electors cast two undifferentiated votes.

What is a 'faithless elector'?

• a. An elector who votes for someone other than the candidate they were pledged to ✓
• b. An elector who abstains from the count
• c. A member of Congress who objects to a state's slate
• d. A delegate who switches parties at a convention

Chiafalo v. Washington (2020) held that states may require electors to keep their pledge, and may penalise or replace those who do not.

What are the two major political parties in the United States?

• a. Democratic and Republican ✓
• b. Federalist and Whig
• c. Democratic and Libertarian
• d. Republican and Progressive

The Democratic Party traces to the 1820s; the Republican Party was founded in 1854 in opposition to the expansion of slavery.

Why does the American system tend to produce two major parties?

• a. Single-member districts decided by plurality reward the largest party and squeeze out third ones ✓
• b. The Constitution recognises only two parties
• c. Federal law caps the number of ballot-qualified parties
• d. Primaries are open only to two parties

Political scientists call the tendency Duverger's law. Parties are not mentioned in the Constitution at all.

What is the difference between a closed and an open primary?

• a. A closed primary is limited to registered party members; an open one lets any voter choose a party's ballot ✓
• b. A closed primary is held privately by the party; an open one is run by the state
• c. A closed primary is winner-take-all; an open one is proportional
• d. A closed primary elects delegates; an open one elects the nominee directly

Rules vary state by state, and some states use a 'top-two' system where all candidates appear on a single primary ballot.

What did Citizens United v. FEC hold?

• a. Independent political spending by corporations and unions is protected speech ✓
• b. Direct corporate contributions to candidates are protected
• c. Contribution limits are unconstitutional
• d. Disclosure requirements are unconstitutional

The 2010 decision covers independent expenditures, not contributions to candidates, which remain capped. It also upheld disclosure requirements.

What is a Super PAC?

• a. A committee that may raise and spend unlimited sums independently, but may not contribute to or coordinate with candidates ✓
• b. A party committee exempt from disclosure
• c. A candidate's own campaign committee
• d. A political action committee run by a corporation's employees

Formally an 'independent expenditure-only committee', created by Citizens United and the SpeechNow.org decision the same year.

What does the Federal Election Commission do?

• a. Administers and enforces federal campaign finance law and publishes disclosure data ✓
• b. Runs federal elections
• c. Certifies presidential results
• d. Draws congressional districts

Six commissioners, no more than three from one party — a structure that produces frequent deadlock by design.

How often is the census taken, and what does it determine?

• a. Every ten years; it apportions House seats among the states ✓
• b. Every four years; it sets the electoral vote
• c. Every five years; it allocates federal grants only
• d. Every ten years; it sets the number of senators

Required by Article I, Section 2. Apportionment then drives both House seats and electoral votes.

What is gerrymandering?

• a. Drawing district boundaries to advantage a party or group ✓
• b. Casting more ballots than there are registered voters
• c. Requiring identification to vote
• d. Holding an election on a non-standard date

Named for Governor Elbridge Gerry's salamander-shaped 1812 Massachusetts district.

What did Rucho v. Common Cause decide about partisan gerrymandering?

• a. Claims of partisan gerrymandering present political questions beyond federal court review ✓
• b. Partisan gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause
• c. Only racial gerrymandering may be challenged in state courts
• d. Congress must approve every state's district map

The 2019 decision closed the federal courts to partisan-gerrymandering claims, leaving them to state courts, state constitutions and independent commissions. Racial gerrymandering claims remain justiciable.

What does 'one person, one vote' mean?

• a. Legislative districts must be roughly equal in population ✓
• b. Each voter may cast only one ballot
• c. Every state has equal representation
• d. Electors must follow the popular vote

From Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which ended decades of rural over-representation in state legislatures.

A candidate can lose the national popular vote and still become President.

• a. True ✓
• b. False

It has happened five times: 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. The Electoral College, not the popular vote, elects the President.

What is a provisional ballot?

• a. A ballot cast when eligibility is in question, counted once the question is resolved ✓
• b. A ballot cast before election day
• c. A ballot cast by mail from overseas
• d. A ballot used when a machine fails

Required nationwide by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, after the 2000 election exposed how easily an eligible voter could be turned away.

What is the difference between a general election and a midterm?

• a. A midterm falls between presidential elections and chooses Congress and state offices without a presidential race ✓
• b. A midterm elects only senators
• c. A midterm is held in odd-numbered years
• d. A midterm is a runoff after a general election

Turnout at midterms is consistently far lower, and the President's party usually loses House seats.

What is a party platform?

• a. The statement of positions a party adopts, usually at its national convention ✓
• b. A binding contract on the party's elected officials
• c. The party's fundraising plan
• d. A list of the party's registered members

It binds nobody legally, and candidates routinely depart from it — but it is the clearest published statement of what a party says it wants.

What is 'dark money' in campaign finance?

• a. Political spending by groups that are not required to disclose their donors ✓
• b. Cash contributions above the legal limit
• c. Foreign contributions to a campaign
• d. Money spent after election day

Typically 501(c)(4) social-welfare organisations, which may spend on politics so long as it is not their primary purpose, and need not name donors.

Who draws congressional district lines in most states?

• a. The state legislature, subject to the governor and the courts ✓
• b. Congress
• c. The Census Bureau
• d. The Federal Election Commission

A growing minority of states use independent or bipartisan commissions instead, which the Court upheld in Arizona State Legislature v. AIRC (2015).

The Constitution contains an affirmative right to vote for President.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

Article II leaves the manner of choosing electors to each state legislature; several amendments forbid particular grounds for denying the vote, but none grants it outright. Bush v. Gore noted that a state could take the choice back.

What did Bush v. Gore decide in 2000?

• a. Florida's recount, lacking uniform standards, violated equal protection, and no further recount could be completed in time ✓
• b. That Florida's votes should be recounted by hand statewide
• c. That the Electoral College is unconstitutional
• d. That Congress must resolve disputed elections

The Court limited the ruling to its own facts, an unusual move that has been argued about ever since.

What happens if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes?

• a. The House chooses the President, each state delegation casting one vote, and the Senate chooses the Vice President ✓
• b. A national runoff is held
• c. The candidate with the most electoral votes wins
• d. The Supreme Court decides

The Twelfth Amendment's contingent election. It has been used once for the presidency, in 1825.

What did Buckley v. Valeo distinguish in 1976?

• a. Contribution limits, which may be capped, from independent expenditures, which are protected speech ✓
• b. Federal candidates from state candidates
• c. Disclosure from disclaimer requirements
• d. Party spending from candidate spending

The distinction has shaped every campaign-finance case since, Citizens United included.

What did Reynolds v. Sims require of state legislatures?

• a. Both chambers must be apportioned by population — 'legislators represent people, not trees or acres' ✓
• b. Upper chambers may be apportioned by county
• c. Districts must follow county lines
• d. States must adopt independent commissions

The 1964 decision ended the practice of modelling a state senate on the U.S. Senate, which had left rural counties with disproportionate power.

What is early voting?

• a. In-person voting at official sites before election day, offered by most but not all states ✓
• b. Voting by mail only
• c. Voting in a primary before the general election
• d. A federal programme run by the EAC

Availability, duration and rules vary state by state; there is no national early-voting period.

What is ranked-choice voting?

• a. Voters rank candidates in order, and last-place candidates are eliminated until someone holds a majority ✓
• b. Voters may cast several votes for one candidate
• c. Candidates are ranked by party officials before the ballot is printed
• d. The two leading candidates advance to a runoff

Used statewide in Maine and Alaska and in dozens of cities. Its supporters cite majority winners; its critics cite complexity.

What was the first American party system?

• a. Federalists against Democratic-Republicans, formed in the 1790s over national power and foreign policy ✓
• b. Whigs against Democrats
• c. Republicans against Democrats
• d. Federalists against Anti-Federalists, formalised in 1787

Washington warned against parties in his Farewell Address while his own cabinet was already dividing into two.

The number of seats a state has in the House can change after a census.

• a. True ✓
• b. False

Apportionment redistributes the fixed 435 seats every ten years, so a state can gain or lose seats — and with them electoral votes — without its own population falling.

Who was the first President of the United States?

• a. George Washington ✓
• b. John Adams
• c. Thomas Jefferson
• d. Benjamin Franklin

Inaugurated in 1789, and the only President elected unanimously by the Electoral College — twice.

Why did the colonists fight the British?

• a. Because of taxation without representation and quartered soldiers ✓
• b. To abolish slavery
• c. To claim territory in Canada
• d. To join the French empire

The Declaration lists twenty-seven grievances, from taxes imposed without consent to trials without juries.

What happened at the Boston Tea Party in 1773?

• a. Colonists destroyed British tea in Boston Harbor in protest at the Tea Act ✓
• b. British troops fired on a colonial crowd
• c. The colonies signed a trade agreement with France
• d. The first Continental Congress convened

Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts — and which prompted the First Continental Congress.

Which 1620 document is an early example of colonial self-government?

• a. The Mayflower Compact ✓
• b. The Magna Carta
• c. The Northwest Ordinance
• d. The Albany Plan

Signed aboard ship before landing, it bound the settlers into a 'civil body politic' governed by laws they would make themselves.

What did the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 establish?

• a. A process for territories to become states, and a ban on slavery in the Northwest Territory ✓
• b. The boundary with Canada
• c. The first national bank
• d. The federal judiciary

Passed under the Articles of Confederation, it is the reason new states entered on equal footing rather than as colonies of the original thirteen.

What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?

• a. Declared enslaved people in the rebelling states to be free ✓
• b. Abolished slavery throughout the United States
• c. Ended the Civil War
• d. Gave freed people the vote

Issued 1 January 1863, it applied to Confederate-held territory. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery everywhere in 1865.

Name one problem that led to the Civil War.

• a. Slavery ✓
• b. The Great Depression
• c. The Vietnam War
• d. Immigration from Europe

Slavery, economic differences between the sections, and disputes over states' rights — with slavery underlying the rest.

What was the Louisiana Purchase?

• a. The 1803 purchase of territory from France that roughly doubled the size of the country ✓
• b. The annexation of Texas from Mexico
• c. The purchase of Alaska from Russia
• d. The acquisition of Florida from Spain

Jefferson doubted his own constitutional authority to buy it, and did it anyway.

What did Dred Scott v. Sandford hold in 1857?

• a. That Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not bar slavery in the territories ✓
• b. That slavery was unconstitutional in the territories
• c. That enslaved people who reached free states were free
• d. That states could nullify federal law

Among the Court's most infamous decisions; the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause was written specifically to overturn it.

What were the three Reconstruction Amendments?

• a. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth ✓
• b. The Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth
• c. The Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth
• d. The Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth

Ratified 1865–1870: abolishing slavery, guaranteeing citizenship and equal protection, and barring racial bars to voting.

What was the significance of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848?

• a. It launched the organised women's rights movement in the United States ✓
• b. It founded the Republican Party
• c. It drafted the Fourteenth Amendment
• d. It ended the Mexican-American War

Its Declaration of Sentiments deliberately echoed the Declaration of Independence: 'all men and women are created equal'.

Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?

• a. Franklin D. Roosevelt ✓
• b. Woodrow Wilson
• c. Harry Truman
• d. Herbert Hoover

Elected four times, from 1932 to 1944 — the reason for the Twenty-second Amendment.

Who did the United States fight in World War II?

• a. Japan, Germany and Italy ✓
• b. The Soviet Union and China
• c. Britain and France
• d. Spain and Mexico

The Axis powers. The United States entered after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

What was the main concern of the United States during the Cold War?

• a. The spread of communism ✓
• b. The rise of fascism
• c. European colonial expansion
• d. Global trade deficits

Containment shaped American foreign policy from the late 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

What did the civil rights movement seek?

• a. An end to racial discrimination and segregation ✓
• b. An end to the Vietnam War
• c. The right of women to vote
• d. Independence for the territories

Its legislative results include the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What was the Marshall Plan?

• a. American economic aid to rebuild Western Europe after the Second World War ✓
• b. The plan for the invasion of Normandy
• c. A treaty ending the Korean War
• d. The postwar reorganisation of the armed forces

Named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and worth roughly $13 billion between 1948 and 1952.

What was Watergate's constitutional significance?

• a. It tested executive privilege and led to the first presidential resignation ✓
• b. It resulted in the first presidential impeachment conviction
• c. It caused the Twenty-fifth Amendment to be written
• d. It ended the Vietnam War

The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment; Nixon resigned in August 1974 before a House vote.

What did Martin Luther King Jr. do?

• a. Led the civil rights movement and worked for racial equality ✓
• b. Founded the NAACP
• c. Served as the first Black Supreme Court justice
• d. Wrote the Fourteenth Amendment

Thurgood Marshall was the first Black justice; W. E. B. Du Bois helped found the NAACP.

Who was Susan B. Anthony?

• a. A leader of the women's suffrage movement ✓
• b. The first woman elected to Congress
• c. The first woman on the Supreme Court
• d. The founder of the Red Cross

Jeannette Rankin was the first congresswoman; Sandra Day O'Connor the first female justice; Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

Who was Thurgood Marshall?

• a. The lawyer who argued Brown v. Board of Education and later the first Black Supreme Court justice ✓
• b. The first Black member of Congress
• c. The Secretary of State who devised postwar European aid
• d. The founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

He argued twenty-nine cases before the Court and won twenty-seven, then sat on it from 1967 to 1991.

The United States has formally declared war eleven times, in five separate conflicts.

• a. True ✓
• b. False

The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the First World War and the Second World War. Every conflict since Korea has proceeded without a declaration.

What does the War Powers Resolution of 1973 require?

• a. The President must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing forces, and withdraw them within 60 days absent authorisation ✓
• b. Congress must declare war before any deployment
• c. The Senate must approve every troop deployment
• d. The Supreme Court must review any use of force

Passed over Nixon's veto. Every President since has treated it as unconstitutional while broadly complying with the reporting provisions.

What was the New Deal?

• a. Franklin Roosevelt's programme of relief, recovery and reform during the Great Depression ✓
• b. The postwar plan to rebuild Europe
• c. The settlement that ended the Civil War
• d. A 1960s expansion of civil rights law

It created Social Security, federal deposit insurance and much of the modern regulatory state — and provoked a constitutional confrontation with the Supreme Court.

What was the 'court-packing' plan of 1937?

• a. Roosevelt's proposal to add justices to a Court striking down New Deal laws ✓
• b. A plan to abolish the circuit courts
• c. A proposal to elect federal judges
• d. A scheme to move the Court out of the Capitol

Congress refused, but the Court's own majority shifted that year — 'the switch in time that saved nine'.

What was Reconstruction?

• a. The postwar period of rebuilding the South and defining the rights of formerly enslaved people ✓
• b. The rebuilding of Washington after 1814
• c. The westward expansion of the 1840s
• d. The industrial expansion of the 1890s

It ended with the Compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of federal troops, after which Southern states built the Jim Crow system.

Who was Frederick Douglass?

• a. An escaped slave who became the leading Black abolitionist writer and orator of the nineteenth century ✓
• b. The first Black member of the Senate
• c. The founder of the Underground Railroad
• d. A Union general in the Civil War

His 1852 address, 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?', remains one of the sharpest readings of the Declaration ever delivered.

What was the Federalist–Anti-Federalist split really about?

• a. How much power a national government should have, and whether rights needed writing down ✓
• b. Whether to remain part of Britain
• c. Whether to abolish slavery immediately
• d. Whether to expand westward

The Bill of Rights was the compromise that ended it — and the first American party system grew directly out of the argument.

What was the significance of the Battle of Yorktown in 1781?

• a. Cornwallis's surrender effectively ended major fighting in the Revolutionary War ✓
• b. It was the first battle of the war
• c. It brought France into the war
• d. It ended the War of 1812

The Treaty of Paris followed in 1783, in which Britain recognised American independence.

What was the Missouri Compromise of 1820?

• a. Missouri entered as a slave state and Maine as a free one, with slavery barred north of 36°30′ in the Louisiana Territory ✓
• b. It abolished slavery in the territories
• c. It ended the Mexican-American War
• d. It admitted California as a free state

Dred Scott declared its territorial restriction unconstitutional in 1857, three years after the Kansas-Nebraska Act had already repealed it.

What was the Gettysburg Address?

• a. Lincoln's 1863 dedication of a cemetery, recasting the war as a test of a nation 'conceived in Liberty' ✓
• b. Lincoln's first inaugural address
• c. The proclamation freeing enslaved people
• d. The surrender terms at Appomattox

Two hundred and seventy-two words, delivered after a two-hour oration nobody now remembers.

What was the Nineteenth Amendment's immediate effect in 1920?

• a. Women could no longer be barred from voting on account of sex anywhere in the country ✓
• b. All adults over 21 could vote
• c. Poll taxes were abolished
• d. Women could hold federal office for the first time

It removed one barrier; poll taxes, literacy tests and violence continued to keep many women of colour from the ballot for decades.

What did the Nineteenth-Amendment era suffragists mean by 'the Anthony Amendment'?

• a. The suffrage amendment first introduced in 1878 and finally ratified in 1920 ✓
• b. An amendment to abolish the Electoral College
• c. A proposed amendment on temperance
• d. The Fifteenth Amendment

Its text never changed across forty-two years of reintroduction, which is part of why the name stuck.

What was the significance of Brown II in 1955?

• a. It ordered desegregation 'with all deliberate speed', a phrase used to justify years of delay ✓
• b. It reversed Brown v. Board of Education
• c. It applied Brown to universities
• d. It ordered immediate integration nationwide

The remedy opinion left implementation to district courts, and meaningful desegregation waited on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Who was Abraham Lincoln?

• a. The President during the Civil War, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation ✓
• b. The President during the First World War
• c. The general who won at Gettysburg
• d. The author of the Thirteenth Amendment

Elected in 1860, assassinated days after Lee's surrender in April 1865.

What was Ida B. Wells known for?

• a. Investigative journalism documenting lynching, and co-founding the NAACP ✓
• b. Leading the Montgomery bus boycott
• c. Founding the first women's suffrage organisation
• d. Serving as the first Black congresswoman

Her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors dismantled the pretexts offered for lynching, using the accusers' own newspapers as evidence.

What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen?

• a. To give up loyalty to other countries and defend the Constitution ✓
• b. To vote in every election
• c. To serve in the armed forces for two years
• d. To learn a second language

The Oath of Allegiance includes renouncing foreign allegiance, supporting and defending the Constitution, obeying the law, and serving the nation when required.

How does someone born abroad to non-citizen parents normally become a U.S. citizen?

• a. Through naturalization ✓
• b. By registering with a consulate
• c. By marrying a citizen, automatically
• d. By living in the country for five years, automatically

Naturalization requires lawful permanent residence, continuous residence, good moral character, English, and the civics test. Marriage shortens the residence requirement but grants nothing automatically.

What is birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• a. Anyone born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen ✓
• b. Anyone with a U.S. citizen parent is a citizen
• c. Anyone born in the country to lawful residents is a citizen
• d. Anyone born in a state, but not a territory, is a citizen

United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) confirmed the reading. Citizenship by descent is a separate statutory route.

Which rights are reserved to United States citizens only?

• a. Voting in federal elections ✓
• b. Running for federal office ✓
• c. Serving on a federal jury ✓
• d. Freedom of speech

Most constitutional protections — speech, due process, equal protection — apply to persons, not only citizens.

What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?

• a. Serving on a jury ✓
• b. Paying taxes
• c. Obeying the law
• d. Attending school

Jury service and voting are citizens' responsibilities; taxes and obedience to the law apply to everyone in the country.

Which of these are civic duties rather than voluntary participation?

• a. Serving on a jury when summoned ✓
• b. Paying taxes ✓
• c. Obeying the law ✓
• d. Joining a political party

Duties are legally required; participation — parties, campaigns, protests, public comment — is a choice.

Who must register with the Selective Service System?

• a. Nearly all men aged 18 through 25 living in the United States, citizens and non-citizens alike ✓
• b. All citizens aged 18 through 25
• c. Only citizens who apply for federal jobs
• d. Nobody, since the draft ended in 1973

Registration remains a legal requirement even though conscription ended in 1973; failure to register can bar federal jobs, student aid and naturalization.

What is one way Americans can participate in their democracy besides voting?

• a. Contacting elected officials or testifying at a public hearing ✓
• b. Refusing to pay taxes
• c. Appointing federal judges
• d. Vetoing a state law

Joining a party, campaigning, running for office, joining a civic group, petitioning, and public comment on proposed rules are all recognised routes.

What is the notice-and-comment process?

• a. Federal agencies must publish proposed rules and consider public comments before finalising them ✓
• b. Congress must publish bills thirty days before a vote
• c. Courts must invite public briefs before ruling
• d. States must consult neighbouring states before regulating

Required by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. Anyone may comment, and agencies must respond to substantial ones.

What does the Freedom of Information Act let a person do?

• a. Request records from federal executive agencies, subject to nine exemptions ✓
• b. Attend any congressional committee meeting
• c. Obtain sealed court records
• d. Compel testimony from a federal official

Enacted in 1966. It reaches executive-branch agencies — not Congress, the courts, or the President's immediate staff.

Why is the press sometimes called the 'fourth estate'?

• a. It acts as an informal check on the three branches by informing the public ✓
• b. It is formally recognised in Article IV
• c. It is a fourth branch created by statute
• d. It has a seat in Congress

The phrase is old and informal. The First Amendment protects the press, but grants it no governmental role.

The First Amendment gives journalists a constitutional right to refuse to name a source in court.

• a. True
• b. False ✓

Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) rejected a federal reporter's privilege under the First Amendment. Most states have shield laws by statute; there is no general federal one.