In __________________, the Supreme Court upheld an apportionment scheme for the
Wyoming legislature based on county lines, even though the scheme had a population
deviation of nearly 90 percent between the largest and the smallest districts.
a. Hadley v. Junior College District (1970)
b. Avery v. Midland County (1968)
c. Karcher v. Daggett (1983)
d. Brown v. Thomson (1983)
In Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Supreme Court asserted that a state could not
prevent its teachers from discussing the theory of ____________.
a. creationism
b. evolution
c. social Darwinism
d. racial superiority
Paraphrasing ________________, the Declaration of Independence (1776) declares the
“unalienable” rights of man to be “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
a. Thomas Hobbes
b. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
c. John Locke
d. Adam Smith
The first of many legal victories won by the NAACP came when the Supreme Court
struck down the Oklahoma grandfather clause in
a. Newberry v. United States (1921).
b. United States v. Reese (1876).
c.Lane v. Wilson (1939).
d. Guinn v. United States (1915).
In__________________, the Supreme Court said that “[i]f a State decides to elect its
trial judges, … those elections must be conducted in compliance with the Voting Rights
Act.”
a. Houston Lawyers’ Association v. Attorney General of Texas (1991)
b. Thornburgh v. Gingles (1986)
c. Chisom v. Roemer (1991)
d. None of the above is true.
In Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819), the Supreme Court struck down a New York law
pertaining to
a. eminent domain.
b. privatization of public schools.
c. bankruptcy.
d. social welfare programs.
According to Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Katz v. United States (1967), the
protections of the Fourth Amendment extend to any place or thing in which an
individual has a
a. specific property interest.
b. reasonable expectation of privacy.
c. subjective desire to remain private.
d. None of the above.
The ___________ doctrine applies only to policies that overtly discriminate on the
basis of race, religion, or ethnicity.
a. suspect classification
b. vagueness
c. equal protection
d. None of the above is true.
During the 1980s, legal theorists such as _________ urged the Supreme Court to
resurrect its former commitment to private property and private enterprise.
a. Robert Bork
b. Raoul Berger
c. Richard Epstein
d. Lief Carter
Primary responsibility for implementing the requirements of Brown v. Board of
Education was assigned to
a. state governors.
b. state appellate courts.
c. federal district judges.
d. federal court of appeals judges.
Which of the following members of the Supreme Court has supported the central
holding in Roe v. Wade?
a. Chief Justice Rehnquist
b. Justice Souter
c. Justice White
d. Justice Thomas
In _____________, the Supreme Court held that a city had taken private property
without just compensation where the city was unwilling to grant a development because
the owner refused to dedicate part of the land to a public use.
a. Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987)
b. Kelo v. City of New London (2005)
c. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980)
d. Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994)
The Warren Court’s decision to expand federal _____________ helped fuel the
“criminal justice revolution” of the 1960s.
a. law enforcement authority
b. pretrial detention
c. aid to the cities
d. habeas corpus jurisdiction
The Supreme Court is most likely to apply a standard of _____________ in ruling on
the constitutionality of a law that classifies persons on the basis of gender.
a. strict scrutiny
b. formal rationality
c. heightened scrutiny
d. substantive justice
In ________________, the Supreme Court upheld the treason conviction of a
German-American who sheltered one of the Nazi saboteurs.
a. Haupt v. United States (1947)
b. Cramer v. United States (1945)
c. Ex Parte Bollman (1807)
d. none of the above
Under strict judicial scrutiny, the ordinary presumption of constitutionality is reversed
whereby the ___________ carries the burden of proof that the challenged policy is
constitutional.
a. party challenging the policy
b. government
c. individual that disfavors the policy
d. None of the above is true.
In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), the Supreme Court held that poll taxes
in state elections violated the __________.
a. Fifth Amendment
b. Sixth Amendment
c. Fourteenth Amendment
d. Fifteenth Amendment
In________________________,the federal government was barred from enforcing the
Controlled Substances Act because doing so would offend RFRA.
a. Reynolds v. United States (1879)
b. Employment Division v. Smith (1990)
c. City of Boerne v. Flores (1997)
d. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita (2006)
Liberty of contract isprotected by the ________________, whereas the Contracts
Clause within the Constitution is found in Article I, Section 10.
a. Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
b. Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment
c. Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
d. None of the above is true.
Among Supreme Court nominees in the last three decades, only ___________ has
rejected the interpretive foundation of the right of privacy.
a. Elena Kagan
b. John Paul Stevens
c. John Roberts
d. Robert Bork
In __________ the Supreme Court specifically held that the right of privacy “is broad
enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
a. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
b. Whalen v. Roe (1977)
c. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972)
d. Roe v. Wade (1973)
The Privileges and Immunities Clause of ____________, provides: “The Citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several
States.”
a. Article IV, Section 1
b. Article IV, Section 2
c. Article IV, Section 3
d. Article IV, Section 4
What was the first case in which the Supreme Court applied the Establishment Clause
to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment?
a. Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)
b. Sherbert v. Verner (1963)
c. Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940)
d. Everson v. Board of Education (1947)
In Miller v. California (1973) the Supreme Court stated that the “basic guidelines” that
the “trier of fact” must follow in an obscenity case include the determination of whether
the work in question
a. is indecent.
b. shocks the conscience of the average adult.
c. lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
d. is utterly without redeeming social importance.
Oklahoma’s version of the ___________________, adopted as an amendment to the
state constitution in 1910, required literacy tests for all voters whose ancestors had not
been entitled to vote prior to 1866.
a. poll tax
b. white primary
c. Fifteenth Amendment
d. grandfather clause
Which justice, writing for the Court in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), opined that the Texas
statute “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the
personal and private life of the individual?”
a. Rehnquist
b. Stevens
c. Kennedy
d. Breyer
As a constitutional doctrine, substantive due process lives on in recent Supreme Court
decisions recognizing various noneconomic rights under the ______ and _____
Amendments, especially the constitutional right of privacy.
a. Third; Fourteenth
b. Fourth; Fourteenth
c. Fifth; Fourteenth
d. Sixth; Fourteenth
In ________________, the Supreme Court explicitly upheld the use of literacy tests
based on the reasoning that “in our society where newspapers, periodicals, books and
other printed matter canvass and debate campaign issues, a State might conclude that
only those who are literate should exercise the franchise.”
a. Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Education (1959)
b. Terry v. Adams (1953)
c. Breedlove v. Suttles (1937)
d. None of the above is true.
Which of the following sets of justices dissented in both Nebbia v. New York (1934) and
West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937)?
a. Holmes, Hughes, Brandeis, and Stone
b. Holmes, Brandeis, Douglas, and Black
c. Sutherland, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Butler
d. Butler, Sutherland, Hughes, and Stone
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court struck down an amendment to
the Oregon constitution aimed at prohibiting parents from sending their children to
a. day care centers.
b. work in factories.
c. private schools.
d. None of the above is true.
In _________________, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas white primary based on a
resolution adopted by the state Democratic Party, which effectively reinforced the legal
view that political parties were merely private organizations beyond the purview of the
Constitution.
a. Nixon v. Herndon (1927)
b. Grovey v. Townsend (1935)
c. Nixon v. Condon (1932)
d. United States v. Classic (1941)
If challenged in a court of law, a state law that requires a person to possess a license to
practice psychological counseling would be subject to
a. the rational basis test.
b. strict judicial scrutiny.
c. the compelling interest test.
d. the suspect classification doctrine.
In Gray v. Sanders (1963), the Supreme Court invalidated Georgia’s “______” system
of apportioning the state legislature.
a. Jaybird
b. county unit
c. one-person, one-vote
d. None of the above is true.
In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Justice __________ asserted that “specific
guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those
guarantees that help give them life and substance, ” and reasoned that the explicit
language of the Bill of Rights, specifically the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth
Amendments, when considered along with their “emanations” and “penumbras” as
defined by previous decisions of the Court, add up to a general, independent right of
privacy.
a. Douglas
b. Harlan
c. Brennan
d. Black