which includes chapters 12, 15, and 13. Based only on the textbook (i.e., you must paraphrase and cannot copy and paste), answer questions from the pool below. As a reminder, AI — including Grammarly or other editing/writing sites — is not allowed and will result in an automatic zero with no make-ups. Answers should be approximately three complete and well-written sentences that are specific and concrete, and they should cite the relevant page numbers from the book. Below the questions is a vocab list. You do NOT need to submit vocab definitions to me. Instead, your vocab quiz will be based on the definitions and significance of the terms on this list.
Assignment Questions
1. What are the formal, or constitutional, powers and duties of the president? What are the informal powers of the president?
2. How does the Electoral College work? What are some of the arguments for and against it?
3. How did presidents who served in the decades directly after Washington expand the powers of the presidency?
4. What factors contributed to the growth of presidential power in the twentieth century? Identify three examples of modern presidential power.
5. How were presidents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries likely to reach the public? Were these methods effective?
6. What do the conditions under which presidents decide to make public pleas suggest about the limits of presidential power?
7. Under what conditions will presidents use direct action? When might they prefer passing a formal policy through Congress as a bill?
8. What is a bureaucracy? What does it do?
9. What concerns arise when Congress delegates decision-making authority to unelected leaders in the bureaucracy (“the fourth branch of government”)?
10. What are the cabinet departments? Name five.
11. How did the United States bureaucracy evolve over time?
12. What are iron triangles? Captured agencies? Issue networks?
13. What is judicial review? What are some of its benefits and disadvantages?
14. What was Marbury v. Madison about? What were John Marshall’s concerns in deciding the case? How did he decide the case? Why was it so important?
15. What do the appointments of the Supreme Courts three newest justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett reveal about the changing selection process for the high court?
16. Discuss the relationship of the judicial branch to the other branches of government. In what ways is the judicial more powerful than other branches? In what ways is SCOTUS less powerful than other branches? How did Alexander Hamilton describe the judiciary in Federalist #78?
17. On what types of policy issues do you expect the judicial branch to be especially powerful, and on which do you expect it to exert less power?
18. In what ways is the court system better suited to protect the individual than are the elected branches of the government?
Vocab List
1. Commander in Chief
2. War Powers Resolution
3. Executive Orders/ Executive Agreements
4. Divided government
5. Office of Management and Budget
6. Veto
7. State of the Union Address
8. National Security Council
9. Spoils system
10. Red tape
11. Government Accountability Office
12. Marbury v. Madison (1803)
13. Writ of Mandamus
14. John Marshall
15. United States v. Lopez (1995)
16. Writ of certiorari
17. Stare decisis
18. Pendleton Act
19. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
20. Federal court system
Requirements: per requirements