UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION QUIZ(version 1.1, 9/20/87)Test your knowledge of the United States Constitution with this quiz. If you get all the answers correct you have an admirable grasp of our Constitution and the principles behind it. If you get them all wrong you're just an average American. BACKGROUND 1. How many states were there in 1787, the year the Constitution was written? (Name them for extra credit.) 2. The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Who was the president of the convention? 3. Which of the following (more than one) were NOT members of the Constitutional Convention: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Abraham Lincoln? 4. What was the basis of government between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1787? Why didn't it work out? THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF 5. How was it that the Constitution became accepted as law? 6. The Constitution provides for two Houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. How many Senators and how many Representatives are there to be in each House? 7. Can the President make laws? 8. Can the President ignore any laws or claim they do not apply to him? 9. Some things were left out of the Constitution, for instance motor vehicle laws (there were no cars in 1787). How are these things to be handled? 10. Must the Constitution be adhered to strictly, or is there some leeway in its interpretation? 11. Can someone who commits a crime in one state escape punishment by fleeing to another state in which whatever he did is not illegal? 12. Some of the following are directly from the Constitution; others are bogus. Which are which? A. "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme Law of the Land, except for the Law of God as given to Man in His Holy Bible through Jesus Christ our Lord." B. "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." C. "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may declare War; he may require the Opinion in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States. D. "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." 13. Does the Constitution outlaw slavery? 14. Can Congress do anything secretly? THE AMENDMENTS 15. Can the Constitution be changed? If so, how? 16. Are amendments different from, or subordinate to, the rest of the Constitution? 17. Does the Constitution prohibit laws that restrict religions? 18. The first ten amendments are called "The Bill of Rights." Why? 19. The Bill of Rights does not say you have the right to smoke. Does this mean you don't have that right? 20. When was the most recent amendment to the Constitution ratified? What was that amendment? 21. Does the Constitution give equal rights to Jews? to Blacks? to women? 22. Is the income tax constitutional? 23. Do convicted criminals have equal rights? How about people accused of a crime? Is the death penalty constitutional? 24. Does the Constitution treat each Black person as three-fifths of a man? EXTRA CREDIT (This question has nothing to do with the Constitution.) Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" contains one blatant falsehood. What is it? ANSWERS START ON THE NEXT SCREEN ANSWERS BACKGROUND 1. There were 13 states. They were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. 2. George Washington. Later he would be elected the first President of the United States. 3. Thomas Jefferson (who was in Europe as American minister to France), John Adams (likewise as American minister to England), Patrick Henry (who "smelt a Rat") and Abraham Lincoln (who hadn't been born yet) were not present. 4. The Articles of Confederation, passed in 1781, joined the states in an alliance. However, the Congress under this arrangement had so little power that it could not stop the states from quarreling over boundary disputes and other matters. Each state had its own money, making interstate commerce very difficult. States could not be counted on to help one another in case of an invasion by the British or Spanish or whoever. Most importantly, it appeared that the Congress was not strong enough to stop domestic "rebellions" such as "Shay's Rebellion" of 1786 in which farmers fought against taxes that were forcing them off their land. THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF 5. By ratification of each of the states. Ratification of nine out of thirteen states was required. By 1790, all thirteen states had ratified it. Article VII provides for ratification of the Constitution. Of course this Article was not valid until the Constitution was ratified, but this doesn't really matter because all the states eventually ratified it anyway. 6. The Senate has two Senators for each state (Article I, Section 3). Each state has a number of Representatives that is proportional to the population of the state (originally counting each slave as 3/5 of a person and not counting "Indians not taxed"). Every ten years this number is decided upon by the Congress. (Article I, Section 2.) 7. No. Laws are made by Congress (Article I, Section 1). The President may "veto" a law to prevent it from taking effect, but Congress may override the veto. (Article I, Section 7.) 8. No. Article II, Section 3: "He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." However, some Presidents have claimed "Executive Privilege" which lets them do more than a strict reading of the laws would allow. 9. The Constitution originally did not say. Amendment X (1791) provides that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution and not prohibited to the states themselves by the Constitution are reserved to the states themselves or to the people. But Article I, Section 8 lays out the powers of Congress, for instance "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Thus, even though Congress does not make the motor vehicle laws (the States do), it can pass laws concerning the use of trucks in interstate commerce. 10. The Constitution itself does not say. Some people are "strict constructionists"; they believe that the Constitution must be interpreted as narrowly as possible. For instance, because motor vehicle laws are not given to the nation as a whole by the Constitution, they are strictly the concern of the states. Other people are "loose constructionists" and believe that the Constitution may be interpreted broadly. For instance, had the writers of the Constitution known about airplanes they would have provided for a Federal Aviation Authority to regulate airspace. Sometimes the strict constructionists win and sometimes the loose constructionists win. 11. No. Article IV, Section 2. The state he is in must return him to the state accusing him of the crime. Note that he need only be charged with the crime in the other state; this implies that it doesn't matter whether he is guilty or not. 12. A. Bogus. Taken from Article VI, except for the part about God, Jesus Christ and the Bible. B. True. Article IV, Section 4. This does not refer to the so-called Republican Party, which did not exist in 1787. C. Almost but not quite true. Article II, Section 2. I added "he may declare War" (only Congress may declare war: Article I section 8) and I left out at the end "except in Cases of Impeachment" (if Nixon had been impeached and convicted, Ford could not have pardoned him). D. True. Article VI, last paragraph. Voters are of course free to use any criterion, including religion, when voting (which is why we probably will never have a Moslem president) but there can be no official rule or law barring Moslems, Jews, secular humanists or anyone else from office on the basis of religion. 13. Yes, by Amendment XIV of 1868. Prior to that amendment, slavery was allowed in the United States. Curiously, Article I Section 9 prevents Congress from banning the importation of slaves until 1808. 14. Yes. Article I, Section 5: "Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy...." The journal of non-secret business is called "The Congressional Record" and is published daily for each day Congress is in session. THE AMENDMENTS 15. Yes. An amendment can be proposed by either two-thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives or two-thirds of the state legislatures. The amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Amendments are ratified by state legislatures. Article V. 16. No. When written down, the amendments are in a separate section so that you can see exactly what was changed, but the Constitution is to be treated as if it were directly changed by the amendments. 17. Yes, by Amendment I of 1791 which states in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 18. They were passed all together as a single "bill", and they explicitly grant rights such as freedom of speech that were not originally clear in the Constitution. The power to deny these rights was not explicitly given to the new government by the Constitution, but people just wanted to make sure. 19. No. Amendment IX says in effect: just because the Constitution doesn't give you a certain right doesn't mean you don't have it. If there is no law or local rule (or school rule) forbidding smoking, you may smoke. 20. Amendment XXVI in 1971. This amendment gives 18-year olds (and older) the right to vote. 21. Jews: yes. Blacks: yes. Women: maybe. Amendment I forbids religious discrimination. Amendment XIV of 1868 abolished slavery by declaring that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens and all citizens have full privileges and rights to life, liberty and property (unless convicted by due process of law). Even after this, women were not allowed to vote. Amendment XIX explicitly gave women the right to vote. Many people believe that the Constitution as it stands gives women equal rights with men. Other people believe it does not, and that an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is necessary. An ERA was proposed but was not ratified by enough states. 22. It is now, by Amendment XVI of 1913. Before the passage of this amendment, Article I, Section 9 was construed to prohibit direct taxation of citizens by the government except in proportion to census, which would mean that everyone pays the same dollar amount. Amendment XVI adds income as a basis for tax; it does not add any other basis. 23. Amendment XIV of 1868 implies that people convicted of crimes by due process of law do not have full rights of life, liberty or property; even before this amendment was passed, it was always assumed that convicted criminals may be put to death (no right to life), put in jail (no right to liberty) or have their belongings confiscated (no right to property). The Constitution does not say whether the death penalty is allowed or not. Some people think it is because it doesn't say; others think it isn't because it is a cruel punishment and therefore violates Amendment VIII. The Supreme Court sometimes says that the death penalty is Constitutional and sometimes says it is not. Those who have been accused of a crime have full rights until they are convicted, by Amendment V. (In practice, people accused of a crime are usually allowed to choose between staying in jail until the trial or posting a bail bond which cannot be "excessive" by Amendment VIII; for some very serious crimes they are not given this choice.) 24. Not any more. Before Amendment XIII, slaves (who were almost all Black, let's face it) were to be counted as "three-fifths of all other Persons" for purposes of taxation and representation. This was a compromise: the slave states wanted to count the slaves as people when determining the number of Representatives but not when determining taxes based on population. After the amendment, the "three-fifths" business is gone. Black people are never mentioned as such in the Constitution. Slaves are not mentioned in the original text but are the "all other persons" of Article I section 2. Blacks who were not slaves (which would include all Blacks in the states that outlawed slavery) had equal rights, in theory at least. Now all Blacks have equal rights. EXTRA CREDIT: "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here...." In fact, the world has remembered what Lincoln said for 120 years and probably will always remember it. But how was Honest Abe to know? FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: The text of the Constitution of the United States can be found in many dictionaries and encyclopedias. The current issue of The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1987, contains the text along with several interesting articles. The Wilson Quarterly is a publication of the Smithsonian Institution and can be found in most libraries and at certain very comprehensive newsstands such as Reading International in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |