AP US Government : Constitutional Amendments
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for AP US Government
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Example Questions
Example Question #51 : Civil Rights, Amendments, And Court Cases
The Slaughterhouse Cases essentially wrote off the effectiveness of the Privileges and Immunities clause. Which Amendment is the Privileges and Immunities clause in?
17th
16th
15th
14th
14th
The correct answer is the 14th Amendment. The details of the Slaughterhouse Cases are largely irrelevant. The most important thing to note is that the Slaughterhouse Court completely discarded the applicability of the “Privileges and Immunities” clause of the 14th Amendment, the text of which reads: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” In fact, the central holding of that case has never been overturned! In other words, the Supreme Court, to this day, STILL does not use the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
Example Question #52 : Civil Rights, Amendments, And Court Cases
The _________________ Amendment granted the right to vote to all men.
15th
13th
17th
14th
15th
This should be a relatively easy question. The 15th Amendment granted the right to vote to all men. There is a good reason that the word “men” is emphasized in the question: many people learn, erroneously, that the 15th granted the right to vote only to black men, but this is incorrect (read the text of the amendment). Having said that, it realistically granted the right to black men (because white men largely already had the vote).
Example Question #53 : Civil Rights, Amendments, And Court Cases
The twenty-third amendment to the Constitution granted what right to the District of Columbia?
The power to control water rights to the Potomac River
The right to 3 electors in the Electoral College
The right to elect a governor
Status as a state
The right to vote in all elections
The right to 3 electors in the Electoral College
The District of Columbia is the location of our government. It is also a city in its own right. Until the passage of the twenty-third amendment while the citizens of the District of Columbia had the right to vote, they did not have any representation in the Electoral College. The passage of the amendment gave them status as a “state” in the Electoral College with three electors.
Example Question #54 : Civil Rights, Amendments, And Court Cases
Which section of the Constitution contains the document’s SOLE explicit mention of civil rights?
The Fourteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment
The Privileges and Immunities Clause
The Bill of Rights
The Fourteenth Amendment
Although it may seem rather odd, the Constitution actually makes direct mention of civil rights only once – and this is not even done in the original body of the document but is instead contained as part of an amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, forms a special trifecta with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; together, these Amendments offer explicit protection to every American, mainly through the preservation of the right to vote and the prohibiting of slavery. Neither of these two Amendments make direct mention of civil rights, however – that is left to the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that every American citizen, regardless of race, gender, sex, or religious belief, is entitled to all rights, fair treatment, and “equal protection of the laws.” In this manner, the Fourteenth Amendment is most famous for its so-called Equal Protection Clause, which played a crucial legal role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
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