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| image from here |
A couple of days ago, September 17, we marked 232 years
since we got our US Constitution.
In honor of that, I thought we might do a pop quiz. This is
open book. You can use your pocket Constitution, or a printed copy, or an
online copy. The answers will follow, below.
Some of the questions are about the history and intent and
surrounding information, but much of it will come from the Constitution itself.
For questions that ask “where in the Constitution” do you find something, you
can answer with Article and Section numbers, or Amendment numbers.
Constitution Quiz
1. What year was the Declaration of Independence signed?
2. What year was the US Constitution signed?
3. What was the purpose of the Declaration of
Independence?
4. What was the purpose of the US Constitution?
5. What are the three branches of government?
6. What does bicameral mean, and what does it refer
to in our government?
7. What chamber represents the people by population—that
is, a representative for a set number of people?
8. How many Senators are in the Senate, how were
they originally chosen, and how are they chosen now because of which Amendment?
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| "The Connecticut Compromise," by Bradley Stevens, 2006 |
9. During the original Constitutional Convention,
what is referred to as the Great Compromise, or the Connecticut Compromise?
10. Does the Constitution grant legislative powers
to the executive or judicial branches? Based on your answer, how do you explain
the Environmental Protection Agency or Roe v. Wade?
11.
What are the eligibility requirements for being
President of the United States; give article and section number for your
answer.
12. Does the President have the power to create the
budget? Explain.
13. What number of justices for the Supreme Court is
designated in the Constitution?
14. What is the Bill of Rights and where is it
found?
15. Where does the phrase “separation of Church and
State” appear in the Constitution, and what does that mean?
16. Where does the Constitution say, “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof”? And what does this mean?
17. What is the purpose of the right to keep and
bear Arms?
18. Explain the compromise surrounding counting
slaves as three-fifths of a person, and where is this found? What was it
changed to, and where is that found?
19. What is the Electoral College? What is its
purpose? Where is it described in the Constitution?
20. Where do you find the enumerated powers? For
each of the following, indicate whether it is an enumerated power or not:[i]
a. Lay
and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.
b. Govern
education.
c. Fix
the standard of weights and measures.
d. Offer
charitable services (welfare).
e. Raise
and support armies and navy.
f. Require purchase of a service or product (such
as health insurance).
g. Establish
post offices and post roads (mail system).
h. Target
industries in accordance with a social agenda (gun manufacturing, automobile
manufacturing, nuclear energy, oil and gas, fast food or sugary drinks).
i. Lay and collect taxes on income.
j. Favor or disfavor individuals or groups for
hiring, educational opportunities, or other purposes based on their race or
religion.
There’s plenty more to ask, but if you know—or can learn—the
answers to these questions, you might know enough to be a good citizen and an
educated voter. And we can always use more of those.
May our Constitution outlast all those enemies within and
without who misunderstand, misconstrue, and even purposely thwart her sacred
purposes.
Answers
1. 1776
2. 1787
3. To declare independence from Great Britain.
4. To form a “more perfect government,” and we
could add, as the Preamble does, “establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure
the Blessings of Liberty” to those founders and their posterity.
5. The legislative branch, the judicial branch, and
the executive branch.
6. It means two chambers. It refers to the two
chambers of our legislature: the House of Representatives, and the Senate.
7. The House of Representatives, which are
apportioned following the census every decade. Since 1910 the number of
representatives has been capped at 435, which means that the number represented
per Congressman continues to grow. Each state has at least one representative,
no matter how low the population. There are also additional non-voting representatives
from Washington, DC and several other American territories.[ii]
A new representative is apportioned for an average of approximately 700,000
people. [iii]
8. Two Senators per state, regardless of population
size of the state. Originally, they were chose by the respective state
legislatures. That changed to popular statewide vote with the Seventeenth
Amendment in 1913.
9. There were those who believed in representation strictly
by population—meaning big states would get much more representation than little
states. The little states wanted to emphasize their state sovereignty by having
representation by state, regardless of size. These smaller states had no
incentive to belong to a union that disregarded them. So there had to be a
compromise. The bicameral legislature was born out of this dilemma. The upper chamber
was the Senate, with equal representation for each state regardless of
population; the lower chamber was the House of Representatives, with
representation based on population size. So population matters, but state
sovereignty also matters.
10. Legislative powers, or law-making powers, are
solely granted to the legislative branch. The EPA is an arm of the executive
branch, with regulatory powers, nominally granted by the legislature, but not
constitutionally so. Roe v. Wade is often referred to as the “law of the land,”
but the judicial branch does not have law-making powers. Hmm.
11. The president must be a natural born Citizen
(not a naturalized citizen), at least 35 years of age, and residing within the
United States for fourteen years. This is found in Article II, section 1, the
fifth paragraph. About the fourteen years: It was not uncommon for people to
spend extended time overseas for various reasons, as Thomas Jefferson was doing
during the Constitutional Convention, for example. John Adams and Benjamin
Franklin also spent years doing diplomatic duties in Europe. This is saying
a person can’t spend a whole life abroad and then show up to try to lead
America. They were trying to make certain that the President would always have
total loyalty to our country.
12. No. Budgets originate in the House and are then
passed by the Senate, and finally signed by the President. (See Article 1,
Section 7.) The President can, however, outline a budget that would meet his
priorities, which the legislature can use or discard as it sees fit. Since
2006, when Democrats regained the majority in the House, budgets have mainly
been a series of continuing resolutions, which means something like, “We’ll
just keep the same budget priorities as the past budget, with perhaps a
percentage increase.” Even during the few years the Republicans regained the majority,
threats of stonewalling until there were government shutdowns allowed
continuing resolutions to become a habit.
13. No number is given. Nine is the traditional and
current number. There was a time that FDR threatened to “pack the court,” to
add as many judges as he wanted to attain his desired political outcomes. The
court at that time resisted for a while, but then gave in to his demands rather
than subject the court to overt, permanent political partisanship.
14. The Bill of Rights make up the first Ten
Amendments. They weren’t originally included, because they were understood as
obvious to the people at the founding. But then some worried that, if they
weren’t included, a later people might not recognize these rights. The
government does not grant these rights. Rather, government is strictly limited
so that it does not infringe on these God-given rights. There are other
God-given, or “natural” rights, such as parents’ rights to the care and
upbringing of their children. In fact, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments make it
clear that government only has those rights enumerated in the Constitution; all
other rights are “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
15. Trick question: it does not appear anywhere in
the Constitution. It appears in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury
Baptists, assuring them that no preferential treatment would be given to any
other religious sect, thus negatively affecting them. Jefferson meant that
government would do nothing to interfere with the various churches; churches
were safe from government intrusion. It does not mean that any appearance of sympathy
toward religion or religious people is prohibited. Nor is this phrase a part of
US law. In fact, at the time of the founding, several states had state religions,
which was not prohibited by the Constitution.
16. This is the beginning of Amendment I to the
Constitution. These two parts mean, first, that there will not be a
state-endorsed religious sect—as was found in Britain and many European
countries (and elsewhere) that the people in America had come from. Second, the
federal government is to make no law that interferes, stops, hinders, prevents,
or otherwise prohibits the free exercise of religion for people in the United
States.
17. In short, self-defense. You could add that, as
the founders spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, a people needs to
be able to defend against a tyrannical government.
18. Article I, Section 2, third paragraph talks
about counting population for purposes of representatives and taxes. The states
with slaves wanted to count all their slaves as persons for representation, but
not allow them to vote. The non-slave states worried that granting this
advantage to the slave states would make it impossible to ever eliminate
slavery. So they came up with this compromise—not to demean the worth of
slaves, but to make it possible to eventually end slavery. Passed in 1868, the
Fourteenth Amendment, section 2, eliminates the three-fifths phrase referring
to slaves, because slavery had been eliminated through the Civil War and the
Emancipation Proclamation. Two years later, in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment
was passed, guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote, “regardless of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.”
19. The Electoral College is the way in which we
elect the President. It allows for the people in their respective states to
elect persons who will cast their votes according to the choice of the people
in the state. A state’s number of electors equals the number of their Representatives
plus their two Senators. The Electoral College procedures are described in
Article II, Section 1.
20. The powers are enumerated mainly in Article I,
Section 8, with some additional enumerations added in Amendments 15, 16, 24,
and 26.
a.
Yes
b.
No
c.
Yes
d.
No
e.
Yes
f.
No
g.
Yes
h.
No
j.
No
[iii]
Here’s how to do the math: https://www.census.gov/topics/public-sector/congressional-apportionment/about/computing.html
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