Chapter 3 Flashcards
What are civil liberties?
The individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution that limit government.
What are civil rights?
The freedom of groups to participate fully in the public life of a nation; protected by the government primarily in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments.
What is the Bill of Rights?
Ten amendments to the Constitution that explicitly limit government by protecting individual rights against it.
What are natural rights?
The idea that one is born with a set of rights that no government can take away.
What is the Fourteenth Amendment?
The 1868 constitutional amendment ensuring that southern states did not deny those free from enslavement their rights as citizens.
What is incorporation?
The Supreme Court action making the protections of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states.
What is the establishment cause?
The First Amendment guarantee that the government will not create and support an official state church.
What is the free exercise clause?
The First Amendment guarantee that citizens may freely engage in the religious activities of their choice.
What is the Lemon test?
The three pronged rule used by the courts to determine whether the establishment clause is violated.
What are accommodationists?
People who want to support “all” religions equally.
What are seperationists?
People who want a separation between state and church.
What is marriage equality?
The idea that marriage should not be reserved for heterosexual couples and that all marriages should be equal before the law.
What is freedom of expression?
The ability to express one’s views without government restraint.
What is freedom of assembly?
The right of the people to gather peacefully and to petition government.
What is sedition?
Speech that criticizes the government in order to promote rebellion.
What are fighting words?
Speech intended to incite violence.
What is libel?
Written defamation of character.
What is slander?
Spoken defamation of character.
What is the clear and present danger test?
The rule used by the courts that allows language to be regulated only if presents an immediate and urgent danger.
What is the imminent lawless action test?
The rule used by the courts that restricts speech only if it is aimed at producing or is likely to produce imminent lawless action.
What is the Miller test?
The rule used by the courts in which the definition of obscenity must be based on local standards.
What are prior restraint?
Censorship of or punishment for the expression of ideas before the ideas are printed or spoken.
What is net neutrality?
The principle that internet service providers cannot speed up or slow down access for customers or make decisions about the content they see or the apps they download.
What is due process of right?
The guarantee that laws will be fair and reasonable and that citizens suspected of breaking the law will be treated fairly.
What is habeas corpus?
The right to be brought before a judge and informed of the charges and evidence against you.
What is the bill of attainder?
A law directed at an individual or group that accuses and convicts them of a crime.
What is the ex post facto law?
A law that makes something illegal after you have already done it.
What is the exclusionary rule?
The rule created by the Supreme Court that evidence seized illegally may not be used to obtain conviction.
What are Miranda rights?
The rights that a person has to resist questioning and not incriminate oneself; the police must inform suspects that they possess these rights.
What is the right to privacy?
The judicial creation from Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that certain rights in the Bill of Rights protected intimate decisions like family planning from state interference.
What are strict constructionists?
Supporters of a judicial approach holding that the Constitution should be read literally, with the framers’ intentions uppermost in mind.
What are judicial interpretivists?
Supporters of a judicial approach holding that the Constitution is a living document and that judges should interpret it according to changing times and values.
What is discrimination?
Differential treatment.
What is suspect classification?
A classification, such as race, for which any discriminatory law must be justified by a compelling state interest.
What is strict scrutiny?
A heightened standard of review used by the Supreme Court to assess the constitutionality of laws that limit some freedoms or that make a suspect classification.
What is compelling state purpose?
A fundamental state purpose, which must be shown before the law can limit some freedoms or treat some groups of people differently.
What is de jure discrimination?
discrimination by laws.
What is de facto discrimination?
Discrimination on the basis of life circumstances, habit, custom,, or socioeconomic status.
What is slavery?
The ownership, for forced labor, or one people by another.
What is the Thirteenth Amendment?
The 1865 constitutional amendment banning slavery.
What are black codes?
A series of laws in the post-Civil War Soth designed to restrict the rights of formerly enslaved people before the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; denied freed Blacks the right to vote, to go to school, or to own property, which re-created the conditions of slavery under another name.
What is the Fifteenth Amendment?
The 1870 constitutional amendment guaranteeing that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of race.
What are the Jim Crow laws?
Laws passed after the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments granted African Americans citizen rights; intended to re-create the power relations of slavery.
What is the civil rights movement?
The group effort of African Americans to claim their civil rights through a variety of means - legal, political, economic, civil disobedience - in the 1950s and 1960s.
What is separate but equal?
The legal principle stemming from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that segregation didn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment unless the separate facilities provided were unequal.
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
The 1954 Supreme Court case that rejected the idea that separate could be equal in education.
What is boycott?
The refusal to buy certain goods or services as a way to protest policy or to force political reform.
What is integration?
Breaking down barriers (legal, cultural, economic) that keep races apart to allow the creation of a diverse community.
What is racism?
Institutionalized power inequalities based on the perception of racial differences.
What is white privilege?
The learned tendency to see the world through the lens of white culture and power.
What is the Nineteenth Amendment?
The 1920 constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.
What is the Equal Rights Amendment?
A constitutional amendment passed by Congress but never ratified that would have banned discrimination on the basis of gender.
What is a glass ceiling?
The invisible but impenetrable barrier that most women face when trying to ascend the corporate or political ladder.
What is gender bias?
Systemic ways of treating women differently to their detriment.
What are stereotypes?
Assumptions about other people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.
What is implicit bias?
The tendency for passing thoughts to confirm existing stereotypes in our minds, even if we quickly catch them.
