Content Areas - GED Social Studies

For much of human history and even today in many systems of government and societies, the rights and freedoms of the individual have been suppressed in order to further the goals and/or security of the state. The political theory of individualism, an important tenet of the American political system, states that the freedom of the individual is more important than the power of the government.

Civic responsibility is a core ideal in American political participation. It states that American citizens have a duty to engage with the political process, and especially that they have a responsibility to get out and vote. The idea is that our freedoms and liberties are hard-won and still quite rare in the world, and we have a responsibility to maintain them by engaging with them.

Political socialization is a broad term used to refer to the means by which an individual forms his or her ideas about politics and develops his or her affiliations with certain ideas and political parties. Many factors impact political socialization, including parenting, education, the media, and social life.

One of the core principles of the American political system is Federalism. In Federalism, power and legitimacy is shared by more than one political entity. In the United States, there is the national government, which retains the majority of control over the political arena, but there are also state and local governments, which have their own areas of power and an established legitimacy.

All fifty of the American states have their own constitutions; however, they are all also required to follow the national constitution first, which remains the “supreme law of the land” as established in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The McCarran Act was signed into law in 1950; it was part of the Red Scare period of American history. The McCarran Act required all Communist organizations and members to register their affiliation with the United States government.

The Equal Protection Clause appears in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It prohibits the states from denying equal protection under the law to anybody on the basis of race, gender, or other forms of discrimination. It also essentially ensures that the Bill of Rights are extended to cover actions taken by state governments as well as the national government.

The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, during the Presidency of John Adams. The Alien and Sedition Acts were released during the so-called Quasi War with France, and sought to (in theory) increase national security by making it illegal to speak out against the government, and by making it harder for immigrants to come to the new nation. The Acts were denounced by Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans as an attempt to solidify the power of the Federalist Party, which helped propel the Democratic-Republicans into the Presidency in 1800.

Appointing Judges to the Supreme Court is a power reserved for the President of the United States.

A Presidential election takes place every four years so if an election takes place in 1860 the next election will be in 1864. The most recent election was in 2012, so the next election will be in 2016.

The head of the Executive Branch of the Federal government, the President, is limited to two terms. Originally this was enforced by tradition alone, following the precedent established by George Washington; however, after Franklin D. Roosevelt exceeded this limit during World War Two and the Great Depression, the limit was codified into the Constitution with the passage of the Twenty-Second Amendment.

The structure of Congress and the powers reserved for Congress are established in Article I of the Constitution.

The House of Representatives may bring charges of impeachment against a President, and if the vote carries, he is tried for impeachment in the Senate. Only two Presidents have ever had charges of impeachment brought against them by the House (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton), but neither were found guilty in the Senate.

Pork-barrel legislation is the name given by any attempt, successful or otherwise, by a representative to gain some benefit for his or her home district at the expense of national interests.

The House of Representatives is the lower house in the United States’ Legislative Branch. The American Legislative Branch operates as a bicameral legislature, with an upper house (The Senate) and a lower house (The House of Representatives).

Being a Justice on the Supreme Court is a tenured position. This means Justices cannot be removed from office by either the President or by Congress. They are effectively in power for life, or until they decide to retire.

There were originally six Supreme Court Justices. This was quickly changed to seven in 1807, to prevent the obvious problem of there being frequent ties. In 1837, the number of Justices was expanded to nine, where it has remained—apart from a brief time with ten—ever since.

During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt met with a lot of opposition from the Supreme Court, which ruled that many of his policies were in violation of the Constitution and attempted to take the powers of the government and the Presidency too far. To try to remedy this situation, Roosevelt attempted to expand the number of Supreme Court Justices to give himself a majority of supporters on the Court; this was of course met with a great deal of opposition, and is now known as "court packing."

Powers of the Federal government include regulating interstate commerce, maintaining the armed forces, coining and regulating money, declaring war, and collecting taxes. Of these answer choices only deciding marriage laws are not powers of the Federal government. States may set their own laws regarding who can and cannot marry, a contributing factor to the present-day debates over whether same-sex couples may marry.

The First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution guarantees certain inalienable rights that cannot be infringed upon by the government. They are the freedom of speech, religion, the press, petition, and peaceful assembly. The First Amendment is the first of ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights.