Dear AP Government students,

Congratulations on beginning your senior year journey. AP Government is a college level course that requires you to not only read the textbook but many documents. This summer you will be completing a 4 part summer assignment. Be mindful that the purpose of the summer assignment is to get you prepared for some of the information we will be gathering and studying this coming year. Furthermore, you will begin to use some of the techniques and strategies that you must master to be able to analyze and evaluate the primary source documents to create a political lexicon that will enable you create informed opinions supported by evidence. The documents in the summer assignment are from the first unit in AP Government: Constitutional Underpinnings of the US Government Federalism and are influential in the development and continuation of our nation and political structure.

Any questions email Ms. Bell,

Part I: Close read of the Constitution

You have to not only read the document but you will answer questions based on the Constitution. It is highly recommended that you annotate the document as you are reading!

DUE Sept 14

Part II: Vocabulary and Current events analysis

This part is ongoing throughout the summer. Do not leave this for the last week otherwise, you will not be able to complete it. Also, if you don’t do the close read of the Constitution this part will be more difficult to complete.

Due Sept 7

Part III: Supreme Court briefs

Here you will read 3 Supreme Court case decisions and create a brief following the directions given to you. These are not new cases for many of you if you took APUSH, Law or US history. We will be looking at these cases using a political lens, not historical or legal.

Due Sept 14

Part IV: CLUES and the Federalist papers.

These 2 Documents are written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. You will need to read these documents and follow the CLUES questions to think deeper about the writings.

Due Sept 14

All parts of the assignment must be typed, 12 point Times New Roman Font, double spaced. If any parts are plagiarized you will receive a zero and your parent will be contacted. Remember if you use information from somewhere else you must cite it and create a work cited page.

A.P. Government Summer Assignment 2018 Part I

Constitution Study Guide

Understanding the U.S. Constitution is essential to the study of United States Government. Utilize the excellent resource from the National Constitution Center, the Interactive Constitution, to close read the Constitution and answer the questions below. This resource is available online and is also available as an app.

Article I

1. Which branch of government in described in Article I?

  1. What are the two chambers of Congress?
  1. How long is the term for a Representative in the House of Representatives? What is the minimum age? What are the other 2 qualifications?
  1. How is the Speaker of the House chosen?
  1. How long is the term for a senator? What is the minimum age? What are the other 2 qualifications?
  1. Who is the president of the Senate and when may that person vote?
  1. Which legislative body has the power of impeachment and which body has the power to try an impeached official?
  1. What is the vote that is necessary to convict someone who has been impeached?
  1. What is a quorum—why is it significant?
  1. How are members of Congress expelled?
  1. How are members salaries determined?
  1. In what house do all bills concerning taxes originate?
  1. The Constitution lists or enumerates the powers of Congress. List 18 of them.
  1. In Section 9, #1, “such persons” refers to slaves. Explain this section in your own words.
  1. In Section 9, clause 8 is called the “emoluments clause”. What does this clause mean and why has it been in the news in 2017?
  1. What is the writ of habeas corpus and when may the writ of habeas corpus be suspended?

Article II

  1. Which branch of government is discussed in Article II?
  1. How long is the term for a president? (Section 1, clause 1)
  1. How many electors does each state have in the electoral college? (section 1, clause 2)
  1. How old does someone have to be to be elected president? (Section 1, clause 5)
  1. What are the other qualifications? (section 1, clause 5)
  1. Name five powers of the President. (section 2, clauses 1-3)
  1. What fraction of which body of Congress must approve a treaty that the president has negotiated? (section 2, clause 2)
  1. When may the President be removed from office? (section 4)

Article III

  1. What branch of government is discussed in Article III?

2. What is the term of office for Supreme Court justices? (section 1)

  1. Who may establish lower courts? (section 1)
  1. In what cases does the Supreme Court have original jurisdiction? (section 2, clause 2)
  1. What crime is specifically defined in Section 3?

Article IV

  1. According to the “full faith and credit” clause, each state must give full faith and credit to each other’s ______, ______, and ______. (Section 1)
  1. Explain in your own words the “privileges and immunities” clause. (Section 2, clause 1)
  1. Explain the extradition clause (Section 2, clause 2).
  1. Who has the power to admit new states? (Section 3, clause 1)
  1. The U.S. has a responsibility to protect every state from what? (Section 4)

Article V

1.What are the two ways an amendment to the Constitution can be proposed?

2. What are the two ways a proposed amendment to the Constitution can be ratified?

Article VI

1. All debts before the Constitution was written are still valid. TRUE/FALSE (Section 1)

2.Explain the supremacy clause in your own words. (Section 2)

3.According to Section 3, Congress cannot impose what type of qualification on candidates for public office?

Article VII

How many states need to ratify the Constitution for it to go into effect?

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES:

Examine the specific provisions you have identified in the Constitution and give examples of each.

Popular Sovereignty

The authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Limited Government

A type of government in which the functions and powers of authority are written, limited, and restricted by law to protect the citizenry.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

Checks and Balances

A government structure that gives each of the three branches of government some degree of oversight and control over the actions of the others.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

PART II

Unit 1 KEY TERMS:

Mayflower Compact
Social contract
Individualism
Democracy
Direct democracy
Theocracy
Articles of Confederation
Writ of Habeas Corpus
Bicameralism
Virginia Plan
New Jersey Plan
Connecticut Compromise
3/5 Compromise
Electoral College
Federalists
Antifederalists
Factions (majority/minority) / The Federalist Papers (#10)
Federalist Papers (#51)
Bill of Rights
Natural Law
Federalism
Unitary government
Confederation government
10th amendment
Delegated Powers
Enumerated Powers
Implied Powers
Separation of Powers
Block grants
Categorical grants
Interstate Compact
National Supremacy
State Rights
Devolution Revolution

Assignment:

Using this vocabulary you are responsible to research 12 Current Events using 12 different terms listed above. You must familiarize yourself with the term and link the term to the current event.

Within your response to the article you must:

  1. An article that is no more than 4 weeks old
  2. Title of the article
  3. Author
  4. Date
  5. Link
  6. Term defined
  7. Summarization of the article
  8. Analysis of the topic

For 3 of your Current events you must find a political cartoon that relates to the term and attach it to the end of the document. You don’t have to analyze it.

Each one of these assignments must be typed and double spaced.

Each one must be handed in on Friday Sept 7th.

PART III

You will read the following Supreme Court’s decisions and dissenting opinions and create your own brief on these cases:

Marbury v. Madison

1803; establishes "judicial review" concept; affirms Court's position as a co-equal branch of government having considerable influence on the politics of government and direction of public policy

McCulloch v. Maryland

1819; defines what is meant by "necessary and proper"; established the primacy of federal government power over state government

Gibbons v. Ogden

1824; only national government can regulate interstate commerce, not individual states; based on Article I, Section 8, the commerce clause

Your brief must be 2-4 pages typed 12pt Times New Roman font double spaced with a proper works cited and you must use links provided but you may use additional resource. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE WIKIPEDIA!

***If you plagiarize, copy and paste, you will receive a zero and your parents will be contacted!!

The directions to create a brief are below, FOLLOW THEM!!!!

1. Title and Citation

The citation tells how to locate the reporter of the case in the appropriate case reporter. If you know only the title of the case, the citation to it can be found using the case digest covering that court, through Google Scholar, or one of the electronic legal databases subscribed to by the library (Westlaw or LEXIS-NEXIS).

2. Facts of the Case

A good student brief will include a summary of the pertinent facts and legal points raised in the case. It will show the nature of the litigation, who sued whom, based on what occurrences, and what happened in the lower court/s.

The facts are often conveniently summarized at the beginning of the court’s published opinion. Sometimes, the best statement of the facts will be found in a dissenting or concurring opinion. WARNING! Judges are not above being selective about the facts they emphasize. This can become of crucial importance when you try to reconcile apparently inconsistent cases, because the way a judge chooses to characterize and “edit” the facts often determines which way he or she will vote and, as a result, which rule of law will be applied.

The fact section of a good student brief will include the following elements:

§ A one-sentence description of the nature of the case, to serve as an introduction.

§ A statement of the relevant law, with quotation marks or underlining to draw attention to the key words or phrases that are in dispute.

§ A summary of the complaint (in a civil case) or the indictment (in a criminal case) plus relevant evidence and arguments presented in court to explain who did what to whom and why the case was thought to involve illegal conduct.

§ A summary of actions taken by the lower courts, for example: defendant convicted; conviction upheld by appellate court; Supreme Court granted certiorari.

D. EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTING

So now that you know the basic elements of a brief, what information is important to include under each element? The simple answer is: whatever is relevant. But what parts of a case are relevant? When you read your first few cases, you may think that everything that the judge said was relevant to his ultimate conclusion. Even if this were true, what is relevant for the judge to make his decision is not always relevant for you to include in your brief. Remember, the reason to make a brief is not to persuade the world that the ultimate decision in the case is a sound one, but rather to aid in refreshing your memory concerning the most important parts of the case.

What facts are relevant to include in a brief? You should include the facts that are necessary to remind you of the story. If you forget the story, you will not remember how the law in the case was applied. You should also include the facts that are dispositive to the decision in the case. For instance, if the fact that a car is white is a determining factor in the case, the brief should note that the case involves a white car and not simply a car. To the extent that the procedural history either helps you to remember the case or plays an important role in the ultimate outcome, you should include these facts as well.

3. Issues

The issues or questions of law raised by the facts peculiar to the case are often stated explicitly by the court. Again, watch out for the occasional judge who misstates the questions raised by the lower court’s opinion, by the parties on appeal, or by the nature of the case.

Constitutional cases frequently involve multiple issues, some of interest only to litigants and lawyers, others of broader and enduring significant to citizens and officials alike. Be sure you have included both.

With rare exceptions, the outcome of an appellate case will turn on the meaning of a provision of the Constitution, a law, or a judicial doctrine. Capture that provision or debated point in your restatement of the issue. Set it off with quotation marks or underline it. This will help you later when you try to reconcile conflicting cases.

When noting issues, it may help to phrase them in terms of questions that can be answered with a precise “yes” or “no.”

For example, the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education involved the applicability of a provision of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to a school board’s practice of excluding black pupils from certain public schools solely due to their race. The precise wording of the Amendment is “no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The careful student would begin by identifying the key phrases from this amendment and deciding which of them were really at issue in this case. Assuming that there was no doubt that the school board was acting as the State, and that Miss Brown was a “person within its jurisdiction,” then the key issue would be “Does the exclusion of students from a public school solely on the basis of race amount to a denial of ‘equal protection of the laws’?”

Of course the implications of this case went far beyond the situation of Miss Brown, the Topeka School Board, or even public education. They cast doubt on the continuing validity of prior decisions in which the Supreme Court had held that restriction of Black Americans to “separate but equal” facilities did not deny them “equal protection of the laws.” Make note of any such implications in your statement of issues at the end of the brief, in which you set out your observations and comments.

NOTE: Many students misread cases because they fail to see the issues in terms of the applicable law or judicial doctrine than for any other reason. There is no substitute for taking the time to frame carefully the questions, so that they actually incorporate the key provisions of the law in terms capable of being given precise answers. It may also help to label the issues, for example, “procedural issues,” “substantive issues,” “legal issue,” and so on. Remember too, that the same case may be used by instructors for different purposes, so part of the challenge of briefing is to identify those issues in the case which are of central importance to the topic under discussion in class.

4. Decisions

The decision, or holding, is the court’s answer to a question presented to it for answer by the parties involved or raised by the court itself in its own reading of the case. There are narrow procedural holdings, for example, “case reversed and remanded,” broader substantive holdings which deal with the interpretation of the Constitution, statutes, or judicial doctrines. If the issues have been drawn precisely, the holdings can be stated in simple “yes” or “no” answers or in short statements taken from the language used by the court.

5. Reasoning

The reasoning, or rationale, is the chain of argument which led the judges in either a majority or a dissenting opinion to rule as they did. This should be outlined point by point in numbered sentences or paragraphs.\

What rationale is important to include in a brief? This is probably the most difficult aspect of the case to determine. Remember that everything that is discussed may have been relevant to the judge, but it is not necessarily relevant to the rationale of the decision. The goal is to remind yourself of the basic reasoning that the court used to come to its decision and the key factors that made the decision favor one side or the other.

6. Separate Opinions

Both concurring and dissenting opinions should be subjected to the same depth of analysis to bring out the major points of agreement or disagreement with the majority opinion. Make a note of how each justice voted and how they lined up. Knowledge of how judges of a particular court normally line up on particular issues is essential to anticipating how they will vote in future cases involving similar issues.

7. Analysis