Chapter 5: ReadingQuestions
1. How do civil liberties often involve a conflict between different liberties?
2. Write a definition of incorporation in your own words as well as explaining the role of the 14thAmendment in incorporation. What is selective incorporation?
3. Explain briefly how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses.
4. What are the difficulties in using the “wall of separation” principle?
5. List and explain the circumstances when the Supreme Court has ruled that freedom of speech may be limited.
6. Define the “clear-and-present-danger test,” libel and slander, prior restraint, imminent danger, obscenity and symbolic speech. What has the Supreme Court said about each? You may just want to put these straight onto your flashcards instead of writing it all out twice.
7. What are the qualifications that the Supreme Court has put on government limits on freedom of speech?
8. When can the police search you or your property? What do they need in order to conduct a search?
9. Summarize the Supreme Court’s changing interpretations of how to protect both the due process rights of accused criminals and to preserve the safety of the community. Define the exclusionary rule and the exceptions that the Supreme Court has recognized to it.
10. Summarize legal issues that have arisen as part of the war on terrorism.
Chapter 6: ReadingQuestions
1. What does the book say is the pertinent question regarding civil rights?
2. Once basic rights such as voting and integration had been obtained, what issues did civil rights leaders focus on?
3. Briefly outline the steps in the NAACP’s strategy in the fight against segregated schools and indicate the success they had in the courts and in implementing desegregation.
4. What was the issue concerning desegregation vs. integration? What is the difference betweende juresegregationandde factosegregation? How has this issue been resolved regarding school segregation?
5. What were the four developments that made it possible to pass civil rights bills?
6. What accounts for the change in attitude in Congress towards civil rights issues from the 1960s to the present?
7. How has the Supreme Court changed in its attitudes towards equal rights for women from the early 20thcentury to today?
8. Define the three standards the Court uses today to in considering Fourteenth Amendment cases.
9. Briefly summarize the highlights of the government’s response to abortion.
10. What are the criteria that the Supreme Court has adapted in defining strict scrutiny of any law involving racial preferences?
11. What is the debate between those who support “equality of result” and those who support “equality of opportunity”? What has the Supreme Court said about reverse discrimination?
12. Summarize what the Supreme Court has said about gay rights and how those rights have evolved. (Your textbook is not new enough to contain Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015)