Unit 3 Flashcards
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Created by:
mrvalenzuela on December 1, 2010
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20 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Autocracy | A form of government where one individual (or a small group of people) make all of the decisions without consulting anyone |
| Democracy | A form of government where citizens vote to make the decisions |
| Monarchy | An autocratic form of government where a king or queen has all of the power and makes the decisions |
| Dictatorship | An autocratic form of government where a dictator takes all of the power by force and makes all of the decisions |
| Direct democracy | A form of government where citizens come together and vote on laws and other things like court trials |
| Representative democracy/republic | A form of government where citizens elect representatives that make the decisions, like laws |
| Natural rights | The idea that people are born with certain rights that can never be taken away by a government, like life, liberty, freedom, etc. |
| Separation of powers | The idea that different powers should be separated between different people (or groups of people) so that no one person can get all of the power |
| 3 Parts of the Constitution | Preamble, Articles, Amendments |
| Legislative Branch | Congress makes laws (in Article I of the Constitution) |
| Executive Branch | the President carries out/enforces the laws (in Article II of the Constitution) |
| Judicial Branch | the Supreme Court interprets the laws (in Article III of the Constitution) |
| Veto | the power of the President to reject a bill passed by the Legislative Branch |
| Roots of American Government | 1. Athenian direct democracy 2. Roman republic 3. the Magna Carta 4. the English Bill of Rights 5. separation of powers 6. natural rights |
| Judicial review | the power of the Supreme Court to cancel out laws passed by Congress that go against the Constitution |
| Checks and balances | a system of limits on government where each branch has the power to cancel out the action of another branch |
| Federalism | a system of dividing government into 3 levels (local, state, national) and giving each level different powers and responsibilities |
| preamble | introduces the Constitution, gives us the goals of our government |
| articles | gives us the framework for our govt. and how it works (the three branches) |
| amendments | changes to the Constitution, usually give citizens more rights |
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