Historic Documents and Court Decisions - GED Social Studies

In the American system of federalism, the federal government makes the supreme law of the nation that all the states must follow; however, to prevent a tyranny of the national government (something greatly feared by the states and the Constitutional framers) the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution declares that all powers that are not explicitly reserved for the federal government fall to the state governments.

For many Americans the freedom to practice their religion was one of the reasons why they moved to the colonies in the first place. Many colonists had been persecuted for their religion in Europe, and so when it came time to establish their own government, freedom of religion was considered extremely important. The Establishment Clause in the Constitution prohibits the government from establishing a state religion.

The Free Exercise Clause is included in the part of the Constitution that features the Establishment Clause, and thus it is related to freedom of religion. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing a state religion. The Free Exercise Clause forbids the government from preventing any religious group from freely practicing their religious beliefs.

The Establishment Clause of the Constitution states that the government can make no law establishing a state religion, and the Free Exercise Clause says that the government cannot stop any American group or individual from freely practicing their religious beliefs.

The opening text of the Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government...

The Declaration of Independence was inspired by the burgeoning liberal tradition which held that it was nobody's natural right to rule over a people regardless of their wishes. Political legitimacy, instead of being based upon divine right or noble birth, is a matter of self-determination among those who consent to being governed.

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson. He famously adapted John Locke’s views that all men have the right to "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Magna Carta was a document signed between King John II and the English nobility in the thirteenth century. It was intended to prevent the King from abusing his power and aimed to protect certain rights of the nobility. It is often considered the beginning of English democracy and thus American democracy.

The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 between English nobles and King John II. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and the Articles of Confederation were signed into practice in 1781.

The Magna Carta (1215) was the first legal attempt to check the power of the English monarchy and to guarantee certain rights for some of the population. Seen as the founding moment of English democracy, it is worth considering that it only protected the nobles and other aristocrats from the abuses of the monarchy, and it would be a few hundred years before any true democracy began to take shape in England. Still, it is a seminal moment in the progression from autocratic monarchy to representative democracy in the English-speaking world.

The pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts from Europe were fleeing religious persecution in England under King James I. They signed the Mayflower Compact which essentially stated they were an autonomous and self-governing people.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a case that focused on the matter of racial segregation policy in the city of New Orleans, Louisianna. Homer Plessy, a man of Creole descent, and his allies on the New Orleans Committee of Citizens staged an act of civil disobedience when Plessy attempted to ride on a white's only railroad car within the city. At the time, New Orleans had implemented a number of policies aimed at keeping whites separate from people of color in public. In Plessy, the court ruled against Homer Plessy and held that racial segregation was legal as long as people of color were provided with equal accomodations while being held separate in public. Over 50 years later, in Brown v. Board of Education, the court reversed precedent and ruled that separate facilities were inherently unequal, especially in the case of schools.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in American history. Certainly it is the most famous case of the civil rights era. It overturned the 1896 decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had originally ruled that segregation was legal under the "separate, but equal" idea. The Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that "separate but equal" segregation was inherently not equal and violated the Equal Protection Clause established in the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case of the Scottsboro boys centered around a group of African-Americans who were found guilty of raping two white teenage girls on a train in 1931 and were sentenced to the death penalty. The case was appealed on numerous occasions on the grounds that the boys had been denied a fair and equal trial process. It has come to represent the extent of institutionalized racism in the American legal system during the first half of the twentieth century.

The revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, was written by Thomas Paine in 1776. It is considered to be the most important document for galvanizing public support for the cause of the Revolutionary War that was published in the early years of the American War for Independence.

Common Sense was written by Thomas Paine during the early stages of the Revolutionary War with Britain. The pamphlet argued that America had both the right to seek independence from Britain and the means to achieve this goal. It was important for swaying countless individuals to side with the revolutionaries and for convincing common Americans that their goal could be achieved.

The Gettysburg Address was a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, during the height of the Civil War conflict. It is generally considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.

The Gettysburg Address was a speech given in the middle of the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln. It is a very short speech, but one that focuses on reaffirming the ideas of universal equality that are espoused in the American Constitution, while also framing the Civil War as a conflict to protect these rights and to preserve the unity of the young American republic.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were written, in secret, by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in response to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and 1799. What they essentially stated was that the states have the right to nullify Federal laws they deem unconstitutional. Many American politicians at the time, including George Washington, considered this to be a very dangerous precedent, and although the nullification issue continued to be problematic in the early years of the American republic, it is now considered not to be right reserved for the states.

The Federalist Papers is the name given to a collection of essays, written in 1787 and 1788, advocating the ratification of the United States’ Constitution. Many of the essays are considered of great historical importance, including Federalist No. 10 and Federalist No. 51.