Main points from 2305

This is intended to be less a review than a review of key points made over the course of the semester. We will review these today in class.

• An educated public is considered essential to the preservation of a democratic republic

• American governing institutions and systems are based on history dated back at least to the Magna Carta.

• A side effect of this history is a governing arrangement is individual liberty.

• The government is legitimized by its resting on the authority of the general population, but the people  do not rule directly. 

• Governments do three basic things: they make, execute and adjudicate the law. Tyranny occurs if these three powers are controlled by one entity. The point of the separated powers is to ensure that these powers do not accumulate.

• The people who wrote the Constitution took human nature into consideration in how they designed each branch.

• Any action of the national government has to be justified by the Constitution – either directly or indirectly. This is not true of the states.

• The United States Constitution is written with vague terminology, which makes it subject to interpretation. Battles rage over how the Constitution should be interpreted.

• The Constitution says very little about the internal workings of each branch. They have evolved considerably over the years, and continue to evolve. 

• Some phrases in the Constitution can be traced to Magna Carta and the British Bill of Rights. 

• The Constitution says nothing about political parties, but parties developed very quickly as effective ways to organize Congress and then to organize the electorate.

• The Constitution allows the states to make rules concerning elections, and until the 15^th Amendment states has full power to determine who go to vote. This also includes the power to design House districts, which has led to gerrymandering on the state level.

• The Bill of Rights applied only to the national government prior to the passage of the 14^th Amendment.

• The Bill of Rights is focused primarily on limited the substantive and procedural powers of the national government. 

• The rights established in the Bill of Rights are generally balanced against the greater interests of society. They can all be limited. 

• The First Amendment is focused primarily on limiting the ability of Congress to pass laws regarding religion and political participation.

• States have the power to pass laws which organize political parties, primaries and how electoral votes are awarded.

• The right to vote - suffrage - was very limited in the early years of the republic but has expanded gradually over time. This has occurred largely because the national government has forced the states to expand suffrage.

• Some of the most important – or consequential anyway – checks and balances are not written in the Constitution.

• Voter turnout tends to be low in the United States.

• The relationship between the national government and the states was impacted significantly by the Civil War and the Great Depression.

• Equality was not a dominant concept in the Constitution until the 14^th Amendment.

• The bulk of elections in the United States are winner take all. This led to the development of a two party system. While there are multiple parties in the United States, only two are competitive.

• The two major competitive parties are not monolithic – they are composed of various factions which compete to determine what the parties actually stand for each election cycle.

• The Supreme Court has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to regulate campaign finance.

• Not all interests are effectively represented by groups. The most powerful groups are those that can overcome the free rider problem.

• Interest groups are especially effective when they are able to work themselves into the decision making processes of each of the branches of government.