___________ enables a court to review a custodial situation and order the release of an
individual who is found to have been illegally incarcerated.
a. The Writ of Mandamus
b. Bills of Attainder
c. The Writ of Habeas Corpus
d. Ex Post Facto laws
Chief Justice John Marshall recorded his only dissenting opinion in which
constitutional case?
a.Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)
b. Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819)
c. Ogden v. Saunders (1827)
d. None of the above is true.
Justice ______________ dissenting opinion in The Slaughterhouse Cases anticipated
the Court’s later development of the Due Process Clause as the basis for protecting
property rights.
a. Thomas M. Cooley’s
b. Samuel F. Miller’s
c. Joseph L. Bradley’s
d. None of the above is true.
In _____________, the Court rejected the First Amendment claim of a Vietnam War
protester that publicly burning his draft card was a form of constitutionally protected
symbolic speech.
a. Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940)
b. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)
c. United States v. O”Brien (1968)
d. none of the above
The term “religion” comes from the Latin religare, which means
a. to regulate.
b. to revere.
c. to restrain.
d. to restructure.
In ________________, the Supreme Court struck down the Helms Amendment to the
Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which required
cable systems that lease channels to commercial providers of “patently offensive”
programming to scramble the signals of those channels and make them available only to
subscribers who specifically request access.
a. Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. Federal
Communications Commission (1996)
b. Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978)
c. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997)
d. None of the above is true.
In 1970, Congress passed a measure lowering the voting age from twenty-one to
eighteen in both state and federal elections. The Supreme Court, however, declared this
measure unconstitutional in
a. Oregon v. Mitchell.
b. Massachusetts v. Laird.
c. Kissinger v. Halperin.
d. Texas v. Johnson.
In ______________, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court permitted the guardian
of an elderly, retarded man to assert his ward’s right of privacy and refuse chemotherapy
treatment for the elderly man’s leukemia.
a. Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz (1977)
b. Guardianship of Andrew Barry (1984)
c. Rust v. Sullivan (1991)
d. None of the above is true.
The best-known case involving the doctrine of ____________in relation to the so-called
right to die is In re Quinlan (N.J. 1976).
a. transferred judgment
b. substituted judgment
c. transferred intent
d. substituted intent
In Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), the Supreme Court ruled that __________, in and of
themselves, did not violate the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.
a. poll taxes
b. literacy tests
c. white primaries
d. grandfather clauses
In ___________, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Idaho Probate Code
that required probate judges to prefer males to females in appointing administrators of
estates.
a. Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975)
b. Frontiero v. Richardson (1973)
c. Reed v. Reed (1971)
d. Califano v. Goldfarb (1977)
In Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), the Supreme Court ____________ a city-sponsored
Christmas nativity scene as a violation of the Establishment Clause.
a. upheld
b. struck down
c. refused to review
d. None of the above is true.
In______________, the Supreme Court upheld by a 5-to-4 margin the power of a state
to regulate the retail price of milk.
a. Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934)
b. Nebbia v. New York (1934)
c.United States v. Butler (1936)
d. West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish (1937)
Section 2 of the ________________ specifically allows plaintiffs to challenge electoral
schemes that impermissibly dilute the voting strength of minority groups.
a. Voting Rights Act
b. Fourteenth Amendment
c. Fifteenth Amendment
d. None of the above is true.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, (1969), the Supreme Court invalidated a state _______ statute,
thus explicitly overruling Whitney v. California.
a. libel
b. obscenity
c. criminal syndicalism
d. vagrancy
In Carroll v. United States (1925), the Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search of
a (an) ____________ believed to be harboring illegal liquor.
a. automobile
b. suitcase
c. office building
d. None of the above is true.
In_____________, a narrowly divided Court held, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that
“the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.”
a. United States v. Miller (1939)
b. Lewis v. United States (1980)
c. District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
d. McDonald v. Chicago (2010)
___________ stated in Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon (1922) that”the general
rule [in the area of eminent domain] is that while property may be regulated to a certain
extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.”
a. Justice Hugo Black
b. Justice Louis Brandeis
c. Oliver Wendell Holmes
d. Charles Evans Hughes
In Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), the Supreme Court upheld an Air Force dress code
requirement against the challenge of a(an) _______ who was disciplined for wearing
_______ while in uniform.
a. Rastafarian; dreadlocks
b. Sikh; a turban
c. Satanist; a pentagram
d. Orthodox Jew; a yarmulke
In ____________, the Supreme Court upheld application of the federal antipolygamy
statute to a Mormon who claimed it was his religious duty to have several wives.
a. Douglas v. City of Jeanette (1943)
b. Reynolds v. United States (1879)
c. Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)
d. None of the above is true.
In reviewing a properly challenged attempt by government to classify persons on the
basis of race, the Supreme Court applies a standard of
a. strict scrutiny.
b. heightened scrutiny.
c. lowered scrutiny.
d. subtle scrutiny.
The Supreme Court has adopted _____________ metaphor of a “wall of separation
between church and state” as capturing the essential meaning of the Establishment
Clause.
a. James Madison’s
b. Thomas Jefferson’s
c. Alexander Hamilton’s
d. None of the above is true.
Also known as the _______________________, the Civil Rights Act of 1870 made it a
federal crime to conspire to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the
free exercise of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the
United States.”
a. Jim Crow Law
b. Black Code
c. Ku Klux Klan Act
d. Reconstruction Act
According to the Supreme Court’s decision in ______________, officers have probable
cause when “the facts and circumstances within their knowledge, and of which they had
reasonably trustworthy information, [are] sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of
reasonable caution in the belief that an offense has been or is being committed.”
a. Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971)
b.Illinois v. Gates (1983)
c. Stanford v. Texas (1965)
d. Brinegar v. United States (1949)
In ___________, the Court struck down a New York City program that used federal
funds to supplement the salaries of public school teachers who taught remedial courses
on the premises of religious schools.
a. Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)
b. Aguilar v. Felton (1985)
c. City of Boerne v. Flores (1997)
d. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita (2006)
In Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Company (1968), the Supreme Court invoked the
______________ Amendment in a decision upholding a provision of the Civil Rights
Act of 1866.
a. Thirteenth
b. Fourteenth
c. Fifteenth
d. Sixteenth
In 1985, Justice ____________ wrote an opinion dissenting from the entire thrust of the
modern Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
a. Harry Blackmun
b. John P. Stevens
c. Byron White
d. William Brennan
The Fifth Amendment protects people against arbitrary use of __________, the power
of government to take private property for public use.
a. sovereign immunity
b. the writ of attachment
c. fee simple
d. eminent domain
In ___________, the Court invalidated a Tennessee statute barring priests and ministers
from serving as delegates to state constitutional conventions.
a.Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940)
b. Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)
c.McDaniel v. Paty (1978)
d. Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
As of December 2013, the provisions of the Bill of Rights that had not been absorbed
into the Fourteenth Amendment include the
a. Third and Seventh Amendments.
b. Fifth Amendment grand jury clause.
c. Eighth Amendment prohibitions against “excessive fines” and “excessive bail.”
d. All of the above are true.
In Board of Education v. Allen (1968), the Supreme Court upheld a New York statute
requiring local public school districts to _____________ to students in private and
parochial schools.
a. provide transportation
b. provide tuition tax credits
c. lend certain textbooks
d. provide civics lessons
In_____________, the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 bars sexual harassmenton the job.
a.Frontiero v. Richardson (1973)
b. Reed v. Reed (1971)
c. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986)
d. None of the above is true.
In _______________, the Court struck down a state law that prohibited door-to-door
solicitation for any religious or charitable cause without prior approval of a state
agency.
a. McDaniel v. Paty (1978)
b. Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)
c. Brown v. Pena (1977)
d. Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940)
The ________ Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press, often
referred to jointly as freedom of expression.
a. First
b. Second
c. Third
d. Fourth