AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

By Charlene Flores
  • Jun 15, 1215

    Magna Carta

    charter of English liberties granted by King John on June 15, 1215, under threat of civil war and reissued, with alterations, in 1216, 1217, and 1225. By declaring the sovereign to be subject to the rule of law and documenting the liberties held by “free men,” the Magna Carta provided the foundation for individual rights in Anglo-American jurisprudence.

  • Declaration of independence

    The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States, was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776,

  • Articles of Confederation

    Articles of Confederation, first U.S. constitution (1781–89), which served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continental Congress of the Revolutionary period and the federal government provided under the U.S. Constitution of 1787.

  • Constitutional Convention

    Constitutional Convention, (1787), in U.S. history, convention that drew up the Constitution of the United States. Stimulated by severe economic troubles, which produced radical political movements such as Shays’s Rebellion, and urged on by a demand for a stronger central government, the convention met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia (May 25–September 17, 1787), ostensibly to amend the Articles of Confederation.

  • United States Constitution

    The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress

  • Judiciary Act of 1789

    The Judiciary Act of 1789, officially titled "An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States," was signed into law by President George Washington on September 24, 1789. Article III of the Constitution established a Supreme Court, but left to Congress the authority to create lower federal courts as needed

  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person.

  • gregory v. Chicago

    In Gregory v. City of Chicago, 394 U.S. 111 (1969), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the First Amendment rights of peaceful civil rights protestors over the overzealous actions of police attempting to quell anticipated civil disorder.

  • Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

    Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, case in which on February 24, 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court established (7–2) the free speech and political rights of students in school settings. On the basis of the majority decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, school officials who wish to regulate student expression must be able to demonstrate that student expressive activities would result in material and substantial interference with the operations of the school