| What is affirmative action? | Efforts to redress previous discrimination against women and minorities with the purpose of refining general law passed in legislation. |
| What is the Bill of Rights? | The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which enumerate a set of liberties not to be violated by the government and a set of rights to be protected by the government. |
| Define civil liberties. | Freedoms protected from interference by the government or by others, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. |
| Define civil rights. | Rights that: 1) enable individuals to engage in activities central to citizenship or legal immigrant status, such as voting or petitioning the government, or 2) guarantee freedom from oppressive actions by others that seek to deny an individual's full status as an equal member of society. |
| What was the Civil Rights Movement? | A social movement of the 1950s and 1960s focused primarily on the situation of African Americans, but also promoting the goals that all people be treated as equals under the law and that discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and place of origin be eliminated. |
| What is due process? | The right to legal protections against arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property. |
| What is equal protection? | The principle that laws passed and enforced by the states must apply fairly to all individuals. |
| What is the incorporation of the Bill of Rights? | The process by which rights and liberties established by the Bill of Rights are applied to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. |
| What is intermediate scrutiny? | An intermediate standard used by the Supreme Court to determine whether a law is compatible with the Constitution. A law subject to this standard is considered constitutional if it advances ''an important government objective'' and is ''substantially related'' to the objective. |
| What was the Jim Crow laws? | Laws passed after the Civil War to establish a system of segregation of public facilities and private establishments that made African Americans second-class citizens. |
| What is the rational basis test? | The lowest-level standard used by the Supreme Court to determine whether a law is compatible with the Constitution. A law subject to this standard is assumed to be constitutional as long as its goals are clearly linked to its means. |
| What is strict scrutiny? | The highest-level standard used by the Supreme Court to determine whether a law is compatible with the Constitution. A law subject to this standard is considered unconstitutional unless it advances a ''compelling state interest'' and represents the least intrusive mans. |
| Define actual malice. | Actual malice in United States law is a condition required to establish libel against public officials or public figures and is defined as ''knowledge that the information was false'' or that it was published ''with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.'' Reckless disregard does not encompass mere neglect in following professional standards of fact checking. The publisher must entertain actual doubt as to the statement's truth. |
| What is the clear and present danger test? | The test proposed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for determining when government may restrict free speech. Restrictions are permissible, he argued, only when speech creates a clear and present danger to the public order. |
| What is commercial speech? | Advertising statements, which increasingly have been given First Amendment protection. |
| What is defamation of character? | Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person's reputation |
| What is the Establishment Clause? | The part of the First Amendment prohibiting the establishment of a church officially supported by the national government. It is applied to questions of state and local government aid to religious organizations and schools, the legality of allowing or requiring school prayers, and the teaching of evolution versus intelligent design. |
| What is the Exclusionary Rule? | A policy forbidding the admission at trial of illegally seized evidence. |
| What is the Free Exercise Clause? | The provision of the First Amendment guaranteeing the free exercise of religion. |
| What is a gag order? | An order issued by a judge restricting the publication of news about a trial or a pretrial hearing to protect the accused |
| What is the incorporation theory? | The view that most of the protections of the Bill of Rights apply to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment |
| Define libel. | A written defamation of a person |
| What is prior restraint? | Restraining an action before the activity has actually occurred. When expression is involved, this means censorship. |
| Who is a public figure? | A public official, movie star, or other person known to the public because of his or her position or activities. |
| Define slander. | The public uttering of a false statement that harms the good reputation of another. The statement must be made to, or within the hearing of, persons other than the defamed party. |
| What is symbolic speech? | Nonverbal expression of beliefs, which is given substantial protection by the courts. |
| What were the Black Codes? | Laws passed by Southern states immediately after the Civil War denying most legal rights to freed slaves. |
| What is civil disobedience? | A nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws. |
| What is de facto segregation? | Racial segregation that occurs because of past social and economic conditions and residential racial patterns. |
| What is de jure segregation? | Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies. |
| What is feminism? | The philosophy of political, economic, and social equality for women and the gender consciousness sufficient to mobilize women for change. |
| What is gender discrimination? | Any practice, policy, or procedure that denies equality of treatment to an individual or to a group because of gender. |
| What is a grandfather clause? | A device used by Southern states to disenfranchise African Americans. It restricted voting to those whose grandfathers had voted before 1867. |
| What is a hate crime? | A criminal offense committed against a person or property that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender |
| What is a literacy test? | A test administered as a precondition for voting, often used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. |
| What is a poll tax? | A special tax that must be paid as a qualification for voting. The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the poll tax in national elections, and in 1966, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in all elections. |
| What is a reparation? | Compensation, monetary or nonmonetary (e.g., formal apology), to make amends for a past transgression or harm. |
| What is reverse discrimination? | The charge that an affirmative action program discriminates against those who do not have minority status. |
| What was the separate-but-equal doctrine? | The 1896 doctrine holding that separate-but-equal facilities do not violate the equal protection clause. |
| Define sexual harassment. | Unwanted physical or verbal conduct or abuse of a sexual nature that interferes with a recipient |
| Define suffrage. | The right to vote; the franchise. |
| What was the white primary? | A state primary election that restricts voting to whites only; outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1944. |
| What did the Supreme Court hold in Miller v. California? | The Supreme Court's 1973 ruling held that a work is obscene if it is ''utterly without redeeming social importance'' and, ''to the average person, applying contemporary 'community standards,' the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests.'' |
| What are penumbras? | Judicially created rights based on various guarantee of the Bill of Rights. The right to privacy is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has argued that this right is implicit in various clauses found throughout the Bill of Rights. |
| What are racial quotas? | Specific shares of college admissions, government contracts, and jobs set aside for population groups that have suffered from past discrimination. The Supreme Court has rejected the use of quotas whenever it has encountered them. |
| What is cruel and unusual punishment? | Criminal penalties that are not considered appropriate by a society, that involve torture, or that could result in death when the death penalty had not been ordered. |
| What is obscenity? | Defined as publicly offensive acts or language, usually of a sexual nature, with no redeeming social value. The Supreme Court has offered varying definitions in its rulings over the years. |
| What is racial profiling? | Identifying the suspects of a crime solely on the basis of their race or ethnicity. |
| What is racial segregation? | The political and social practice of separating whites and blacks into dual and highly unequal schools, hospitals, prisons, public parks, housing, and public transportation. |
| What is selective incorporation? | The Supreme Court's gradual process of assuming guardianship of civil liberties by applying piecemeal the various provisions of the Bill of Rights to state laws and practices. |
| What is the Lemon test? | The most far-reaching of the controversial cases in which the Supreme Court specified three conditions every state law must satisfy to avoid running afoul of the establishment of religion prohibition: the statute in question ''must have a secular legislative purpose, such as remedial education; the statute's ''primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion''; and the statute must not foster ''an excessive government entanglement with religion. |
| What is the Miranda rule? | Requirement that police inform suspects that they have a right to remain silent and a right to have counsel while being interrogated. Failure to inform suspects of their rights will result in any confession or evidence thus obtained being inadmissible against them at trial. |
| What is the Privileges and Immunities Clause? | The clause in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment stipulating that ''no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.'' |
| What is the religious-neutrality test? | Policy favored by justices in establishment of religion decisions. The justices used the neutrality test not so much to prevent favoritism among religious groups as to root out policies that preferred religious groups generally over nonreligious groups engaged in a similar activity. |
| What is the Takings Clause? | The Fifth Amendment provision on property rights: ''private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.'' |
| What was the Fugitive Slave Law? | The 1850 law compelling northerners to honor southerners' property claims to slaves, passed in return for the South's agreeing to admit California as a free state (and hence lose its ability to block legislation in the Senate). |
| Who were the suffragists? | Women who campaigned in the early 20th century for the right of women to vote. |