Advanced Placement American Government
Curriculum Map
Constitutional Underpinnings (5-15%)
Constitutional Democracy
1. Distinguish between direct and representative democracy.
2. Explain the interacting values that comprise the democratic faith, such as popular
consent, respect for the individual, equality of opportunity, and personal liberty;
and examine how democratic values may conflict with one another.
3. Analyze the interrelated political processes that comprise democracy.
4. Identify the interdependent political structures that make up the American system
of democracy.
5. Discuss the educational, economic, social, and ideological conditions conducive
to establishing and maintaining democracy.
6. Trace the historical roots of the American Revolution.
7. Explain the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
8. Discuss the impact of the Annapolis Convention and Shays Rebellion on the
calling of the Constitutional Convention.
9. List the major issues on which the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had
consensus as well as those issues on which the delegates had conflicts and
compromise.
10. Debate the arguments against ratification.
11. Summarize the steps involved in ratifying the Constitution.
12. Discuss the major challenges for the American system of constitutional
democracy.
13. Define key terms.
The Constitution
1. Explain the various ways the framers tried to limit government, including
federalism, free elections, and checks and balances.
2. Describe the concept of separation of powers and its relationship to checks and
balances.
3. Define judicial review.
4. Explain how the case Marbury v. Madison established the principle of judicial
review.
5. Explain how the checks and balances system has been modified by the rise of
national political parties, creation of an independent regulatory commission,
changes in the electoral system, changes in technology, and in international
affairs.
6. Contrast the British and American political systems.
7. Explain the process of the impeachment and removal power.
8. List presidential practices, and discuss how such practices have evolved.
9. Explain the two methods for proposing and for ratifying amendments to the
Constitution.
10. Explain various theoretical perspectives relating to the Constitution.
11. Define key terms.
Federalism
1. Define federalism and its constitutional basis between the national and state
governments.
2. Examine various interpretations of federalism, such as dual, cooperative, marble
cake, competitive, permissive, and "New Federalism."
3. Identify and describe alternatives to federalism.
4. List advantages of federalism as they relate to the needs of a heterogeneous
people.
5. Examine powers of the national government, powers reserved for the states, and
concurrent powers shared by the national and state governments.
6. Identify limits and obligations on both national and state powers.
7. Describe the federal systems found in Canada, Germany, and Switzerland.
8. Discuss the changing role of federal courts in national-state relations, especially
following McCulloch v. Maryland.
9. Describe the expanding role of the federal courts in reviewing state and local
government activities through the Fourteenth Amendment, federal mandates, and
federal preemption.
10. Explain the historical growth in national governmental powers relative to the
states, including the debate between the centralists and decentralists.
11. Identify and describe four types of federal grants, and state the goals of federal
grants.
12. Examine the politics of federal grants, including how the battle over the
appropriate level of government to control the funds tends to be cyclical.
13. Analyze the impact of federal mandates on state and local government.
14. Identify and describe new techniques of federal control.
15. Examine reasons for the growth of big government and reasons why Congress is
pressured to reduce national programs.
16. Discuss why federalism has grown increasingly complicated, with changing
political power distribution, and the reemergence of the states.
17. Define key terms.
Institutions of Government (35-45%)
Congress
1. Assess the factors that go into redistricting, reapportionment, and gerrymandering,
and their impact on House elections.
2. Describe the professional qualifications and profile the typical member of
Congress.
3. Explain the importance of bicameralism.
4. List differences between the House of Representatives and the Senate.
5. Identify and define the basic functions of Congress.
6. Identify the major leadership positions in the House and Senate.
7. Examine the political environment in the Senate. Explain why some consider the
job of U.S. senator to be more prestigious.
8. Indicate the role of unlimited debate and the filibuster in Senate proceedings.
9. Explain the role of and procedures used in the Senate confirmation powers.
10. Distinguish between Congress as a law-making institution and as a representative
assembly.
11. Distinguish between the delegate and trustee roles of legislators.
12. Analyze the types of pressures and influences a member of Congress is subject to
in the decision-making or law-making role.
13. Evaluate the impact and power of congressional staff.
14. Trace the pathway of a bill through both houses of Congress.
15. Analyze the importance of committees and subcommittees with particular focus on their chairs and the process by which they are chosen, especially the impact of seniority.
16. Explain why so many congressional incumbents win.
17. Explain how the congressional impeachment process works by referring to
Clinton’s impeachment.
18. Define key terms.
The Presidency
1. Evaluate what the public expects of the president in the "unwritten presidential
job description."
2. Describe the office of the presidency as established in the Constitution.
3. Explain the positive qualities that the public wants their president to have.
4. Explain why the media and the president are so often in conflict.
5. Evaluate why Congress and the Supreme Court have often been willing partners
in the expansion of presidential power and identify factors that have strengthened
the presidency.
6. Identify and summarize roles of the president.
7. List the functions of the vice president.
8. Examine two constitutional amendments that significantly affected the vice-
presidency.
9. Evaluate the constraints on the ability of the president to act, such as the media
and international pressures.
10. Debate whether the powers of the presidency are both too powerful and too weak.
11. Discuss the presidential legacy of Bill Clinton.
12. Discuss what factors make for a “great” president and what factors contribute to
a failed presidency.
13. Define key terms.
Congressional – Presidential Relations
1. Explain those factors that promote both cooperation and conflict within the
congressional-presidential relationship.
2. List specific reasons why some presidents are more effective with Congress than
others.
3. Explain what the president tries to accomplish in his State of the Union Address.
4. Explain why members of Congress have different political perspectives from that
of the president.
5. Discuss why most presidents seem to have greater legislative success when their
own party controls both houses of Congress. Conversely, explain how divided
government is often preferred by large numbers of the American people.
6. Explain the reasons why Congress and the president have clashed over the war
powers issue. Also, be able to discuss the content of the War Powers Resolution.
7. Explain why confirmation politics can become destructive and even mean-
spirited at times.
8. List reasons why the presidential use of executive privilege, executive orders, and
the veto can promote discord between him and Congress.
9. Define impoundment, deficits, and continuing resolutions.
10. Explain the issues involved in the Clinton impeachment process.
11. Discuss why coalition building is important to a president’s success or failure vis-a-vis Congress.
12. Define key terms.
The Bureaucracy
1. Describe the size of the federal bureaucracy.
2. Define bureaucracy and bureaucrat.
3. Describe who bureaucrats are and what bureaucrats do.
4. Describe the formal organization of the bureaucracy.
5. Indicate the importance of the informal organization.
6. Explain how the bureaucracy has evolved and the importance and impact of the Hatch Act, old and new.
7. List the principles of the formal textbook model of bureaucratic administration.
8. Describe the limitations on bureaucratic power.
9. Assess bureaucratic realities including the existence of iron triangles.
10. Analyze how the fictitious George Brown illustrates the dilemmas faced by
bureaucrats in determining accountability and defining the public interest.
11. Debate the need for big government and big bureaucracy, including a discussion
of how to reorganize and eliminate waste in them.
12. Debate the extent to which government should privatize public services.
13. Examine bureaucratic accountability to the President and to Congress.
14. Define key terms.
The Judiciary
1. Define judicial review.
2. Identify and define eight types of law.
3. Explain how the adversary system shapes the role of judges and the scope of
judicial power.
4. Describe how judges make law.
5. Analyze the role of stare decisis in the judicial system.
6. Outline the structure of federal courts, identifying the jurisdiction of each.
7. Describe the relationship between federal and state courts.
8. Describe the roles of federal lawyers, prosecutors, solicitor general, assistant
attorney general, and public defenders. Also, comment on the role of the Legal
Services Corporation.
9. Describe the process used to select federal judges, including the role of the
president, the Senate, senatorial courtesy, the American Bar Association, and the
Judicial Selection Monitoring Project.
10. Analyze the impact of party, race, sex, and ideology on the judicial selection
process.
11. Compare judicial activism and judicial restraint and their relationship to political
ideology.
12. Explain how ideology and judicial philosophy affect when sitting judges choose
to retire.
13. Discuss how partisan politics enters the judicial selection process, the size of the
federal judiciary, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
14. Explain how cases reach the Supreme Court.
15. Discuss the role of briefs and oral arguments in a Supreme Court case.
16. Describe how the Supreme Court acts in conference.
17. Describe the importance of written judicial opinions.
18. Describe the powers of the chief justice.
19. Explain what happens to a case after the Supreme Court has ruled.
20. Debate the proper role of the courts.
21. Analyze the relationship between the Supreme Court and the people.
22. Define key terms.
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (5-15%)
First Amendment Freedoms
1. Explain the Nationalization of the Bill of Rights through selective incorporation.
2. Define the Establishment Clause, including what it does and does not prohibit; and the
prevailing doctrine.
3. Describe the three-part test created in Lemon v. Kurtzman to determine if a statute violates the Establishment Clause, and identify and describe various tests advocated by various judges to interpret the establishment clause.
4. Explain how and when tax funds may be used to fund educational programs at church-related schools.
5. Analyze the disputes that arise between the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.
6. Assess how the Supreme Court altered the interpretation of the free exercise clause in the compelling interest test, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), and how the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was explicitly designed to reverse that Court decision.
7. Distinguish among belief, speech, and action.
8. Define the following historic constitutional tests on freedom of speech issue: bad tendency test, clear and present danger test, and the preferred position doctrine.
9. Identify and define doctrines currently used by the Supreme Court to measure the limits of governmental power on freedom of speech.
10. Explain the prevailing view of the freedom of the press and the Court's position of the press's right to know.
11. Summarize how the Constitution protects other media.
12. Explain the libel guidelines established by the New York Times v. Sullivan case.
13. List the standards of obscenity as defined by the Miller decision.
14. Compare the changing social and judicial interpretations of obscenity and pornography.
15. Assess the problems involved in regulating "fighting words."
16. Describe the impact of time, place, and manner regulations on the freedom of assembly.
17. Explain the significance of sunshine laws, the FOIA, and the electronic FOIA.
18. Summarize legislative and judicial action toward the regulation of sedition.
19. Discuss the relationship of the Christian Coalition to a school prayer amendment.
20. Explain the constitutional implications of hate speech on campus.
21. Discuss how aid may be provided to children attending parochial schools.
22. Discuss the rights of Right to Life groups to protest abortion clinics as well as the rights of pro-choice groups to have those clinics protected from violence or harassment.
23. Define key terms.
Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property
1. Explain the meaning of due process.
2. What are the major naturalization requirements?
3. Describe dual citizenship.
4. Explain how citizenship is acquired and lost.
5. Identify and describe rights of American citizens.
6. Examine the rights of aliens.
7. Summarize immigration laws for admission to the United States.
8. Examine the political and practical problems caused by the presence of undocumented aliens.
9. Examine the constitutional protections of property.
10. Compare and contrast procedural and substantive due process.
11. List three aspects of privacy rights.
12. Analyze the current standing in the courts of the right to privacy, especially in regard to state power to regulate abortions and sexual orientation.
13. Distinguish between unreasonable and reasonable searches and seizures.
14. Identify and describe the exceptions to the general rule against warrantless searches and seizures.
15. Explain the exclusionary rule, the right to remain silent, and the Miranda warning.
16. Summarize a criminal case in the federal court system, listing the major rights to be protected and the procedures to be followed.
17. Specify the connection between the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment.
18. Debate whether the American system of justice is unjust, in that it has too many loopholes, is too unreliable, and is discriminatory.
19. Discuss the role of the Supreme Court in protecting civil liberties and the
constraints on that role.
20. Discuss the controversy over the death penalty, noting the new variable of DNA testing.
21. Explain the significance of racial profiling.
22. Define key terms.
Equal Rights Under the Law
1. Define human rights and how the Constitution provides for protecting civil rights.
Differentiate between civil rights and civil liberties.
2. Discuss the various ways equality can be conceptualized.
3. Trace the development of the women's liberation movement from before the Civil
War to the present. Also, explain the importance of sexual harassment.
4. Summarize the development of the African American struggle for racial justice
from the Civil War to the present.
5. Compare the historical experiences and current demands for equality of women,
Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native-Americans. Also, why have Hispanics
not had more political clout?
6. Describe how the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is used
to limit state action that classifies individuals unreasonably.
7. Compare three tiers of tests used to determine whether a law complies with the
equal protection requirement.
8. Define what makes a right fundamental in the constitutional sense.
9. Compare disparate impact and intent to discriminate in proving discrimination.
10. Define Jim Crow laws.
11. Discuss the question raised in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court's
ruling and its effects, and the Court's reversal of Plessy in the 1954 Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka case.