The power of the government to take private property for a public purpose is known as
a. eminent domain.
b. fee simple.
c. sovereign immunity.
d.corpus juris maximus.
Beginning in the late 1880s, the Supreme Court used substantive due process, as well as
the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment and related constitutional provisions, to
protect _______________ from ________________.
a. economic individualism; legislative power
b. public policy; economic individualism
c. economic freedom; individualism
d. the government’s police power; Social Darwinism
In Texas v. Johnson, the flag-burning decision of 1989, it was surprising that two
Reagan appointees, Justices __________ and ________, joined the majority in
reversing Johnson’s conviction.
a. Scalia; Kennedy
b. O”Connor; Kennedy
c. Souter; Scalia
d. O”Connor; Scalia
In Adair v. United States (1908), the Supreme Court invalidated on Fifth Amendment
due process grounds a federal act outlawing “__________” contracts, under which
persons agreed, as a condition of employment, not to join labor unions.
a. yellow dog
b. scab
c. union buster
d. muckraker
In _____________________the Supreme Court voted to uphold a public school
principal’s decision to excise certain controversial material from the school newspaper.
a. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)
b. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
c. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)
d. None of the above is true.
In _____________, the Supreme Court found that a newly created law school at the
Texas College for Negroes under the separate but equal doctrine was substantially
inferior to the whites-only law school at the University of Texas.
a. Sipuel v. Oklahoma Board of Regents (1948)
b. Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
c. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)
d. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938)
In ______________, the Supreme Court upheld a child labor law that prohibited boys
under the age of 12 and girls under the age of 18 from selling newspapers on the street
against an attack based on the Free Exercise Clause.
a. Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972)
b. Minnesota v. Hershberger (1990)
c. Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)
d. Prince v. Massachusetts (1944)
The 2003 affirmative action cases of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger came to
the Supreme Court from which state?
a. Maine
b. Michigan
c. Minnesota
d. Missouri
A civil suit begins when one party, the ______, files suit against another party, the
_____.
a. defendant; plaintiff
b. plaintiff; defendant
c. state; plaintiff
d. none of the above
In ____________, the Supreme Court refused to extend Contracts Clause protection to
a chartered lottery company subsequently prohibited from selling lottery tickets in
Mississippi.
a. Charles River Bridge Company v. Warren Bridge Company (1837)
b. Stone v. Mississippi (1880)
c. Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934)
d. None of the above is true.
In___________, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this longstanding distaste for “dragnet”
searches when it invalidated a five-hour search of a Communist Party headquarters
resulting in the seizure of some 5,000 items.
a.Stanford v. Texas (1965)
b. Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971)
c. Brinegar v. United States (1949)
d. Illinois v. Gates (1983)
The process of selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth
Amendment began in 1897 in
a. Hurtado v. California.
b. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago.
c. The Slaughterhouse Cases.
d. Twining v. New Jersey.
The Supreme Court refused to entertain a claim brought on behalf of Joshua DeShaney
against a publicly funded social agency because, in the stated view of the majority, no
_________ was demonstrated.
a. knowledge by social workers of the violent tendencies of Joshua’s father
b. indication of previous injury to Joshua
c. inattention by social workers
d. required element of state action
According to your textbook which justice of the Supreme Court is considered to be the
“the best known and most forceful of the First Amendment absolutists?”
a. John Marshall
b. Hugo Black
c. Earl Warren
d. Samuel Alito
Writing for the Court in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), Justice __________ characterized
freedom of speech as “the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other
form of freedom.”
a. Benjamin Cardozo
b. Hugo Black
c. Robert Jackson
d. Felix Frankfurter
The _________________ protects the individual from unwarranted government
interference in intimate personal relationships or activities.
a. Fourth Amendment
b. constitutional right of privacy
c. Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and Immunities Clause
d. Tenth Amendment
The _____________ adopted in the aftermath of The Civil Rights Cases required
segregation in virtually every area of public life requiring blacks and whites to attend
separate schools, use separate parks, ride in separate railroad cars, and to be buried in
separate cemeteries.
a. Jim Crow laws
b. black codes
c. separation laws
d. None of the above is true.
Which of the following members of the Supreme Court was most clearly identified with
the view that governmental policies should accommodate religious practices?
a. Hugo Black
b. Robert Jackson
c. William Brennan
d. Warren Burger
The Supreme Court’s decision in ________________ (1819) is widely considered to
have had great influence on economic development in nineteenth-century America.
a. Dartmouth College v. Woodward
b. Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co.
c. U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co.
d. Chisholm v. Georgia
In ____________, the Supreme Court upheld a New York statute requiring local public
school districts to lend textbooks on secular subjects to students in private and parochial
schools.
a. Everson v. Board of Education (1947)
b. Board of Education v. Allen (1968)
c. Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)
d. Zorach v. Clauson (1952)
In City of Richmond v. Croson Company (1989) the Supreme Court
a. broadened the scope of federal affirmative action programs in the awarding of
construction contracts.
b. declared state affirmative action programs in the area of professional school
admissions unconstitutional.
c. held that the issue of affirmative action in the field of private employment presents a
political question beyond the scope of judicial review.
d. placed significant limitations on nonfederal affirmative action programs in the
awarding of government contracts.
In _________________, the Supreme Court struck down the plans of public school
districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky to create a degree of racial
balance between whites and nonwhites in their public high schools by basing student
admissions in part on racial criteria.
a. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)
b. Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
c. DeFunis v. Odegaard (1974)
d. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)
Which of the following forms of expression is least likely to be accorded First
Amendment protection?
a. Commercial advertising
b. Symbolic political speech
c. Libel
d. Questionable scientific claims
In 1980, independent presidential candidate __________________ filed suit in federal
court to challenge Ohio’s March filing deadline for the November general elections.
a. Ross Perot
b. George Wallace
c. Harold Stassen
d. John Anderson
In Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. first articulated
the famous ________________ test.
a. clear and present danger
b. clear and probable danger
c. imminent lawless action
d. bad tendency
In____________, the Supreme Court invalidated as a violation of the Contracts Clause
an act of the Georgia legislature that rescinded the state’s sale of land to private
investors.
a. Calder v. Bull (1798)
b. Marbury v. Madison (1803)
c. Fletcher v. Peck (1810)
d. None of the above is true.
Until recently, most federal courts followed the ________ test in determining whether
appointed counsel was ineffective at trial.
a. mockery of justice
b. harmless error
c. reasonable doubt
d. preponderance of evidence
An accepted justification for warrantless searches includes ______________.
a. plain view
b. evanescent evidence
c. hot pursuit
d. All of the above are true.
Writing for the Court in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), which justice
stated that “educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control
over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored, expressive activities
so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
a. William Rehnquist
b. Byron White
c. William Brennan
d. Hugo Black
In ____________, the Court struck down the white primary as violative of the Fifteenth
Amendment.
a. Nixon v. Condon (1932)
b. Grovey v. Townsend (1935)
c. United States v. Classic (1941)
d. Smith v. Allwright (1944)
In ___________________, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction in which
government agents, acting without a warrant, attached a “bug,” or listening device, to
the outside of a public telephone booth from which a suspected bookie often placed
calls.
a. Oliver v. United States (1984)
b. Katz v. United States (1967)
c. Kyllo v. United States (2001)
d. None of the above is true.
Despite the importance of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court did not begin to
give major attention to these rights until after
a. the Civil War.
b. World War I.
c. the Great Depression.
d. World War II.