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Civil Rights in the USA

  • 6 subtopics
  • 15 things to know
  • Paper 2

What Civil Rights in the USA covers

Where rights come from in a codified system, how the Fourteenth Amendment carried them into the states, the civil rights movement and its methods, and the issues still being fought over.

Where it is assessed

Paper 2

The government and politics of the USA.

Check the AQA specification ↗

The 6 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Distinguish civil liberties from civil rights.

Numbers

What is the Bill of Rights?

Key term

Why was the Bill of Rights added so soon after the Constitution?

Numbers

What did the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments achieve?

Key term

Why did Brown v Board of Education not immediately end segregated schooling?

Key term

Why should landmark rulings be treated as illustrative rather than as a closed list?

Numbers

What was the civil rights movement?

Numbers

What is Black Lives Matter?

Numbers

What was the NAACP's central strategy?

Process

Name a group that defends civil liberties across the board, and say what it does.

Key term

Why is litigation especially attractive to a minority cause?

Key term

How do rights groups try to influence judicial appointments?

Process

How does the gun debate illustrate the wider pattern of US rights politics?

Key term

What is the Hyde Amendment?

Key term

How broadly does the First Amendment protect speech?

Take Civil Rights in the USA further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

  • Civil liberty vs Civil right

    Civil liberty: freedom protected against government interference. Civil right: entitlement to equal treatment and participation.

  • De jure segregation vs De facto segregation

    De jure segregation: separation required by law. De facto segregation: separation produced through practice or circumstance.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Distinguish civil liberties from civil rights.

    Model answer

    Civil liberties are freedoms held against government interference, such as speech and religion, while civil rights are entitlements to equal treatment and protection from discrimination.

  2. 2

    What is the Bill of Rights?

    Model answer

    The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, ratified in 1791, which set out the basic protections held by citizens against the federal government.

  3. 3

    Why was the Bill of Rights added so soon after the Constitution?

    Model answer

    Opponents of ratification feared a powerful central government, and the promise of written guarantees was the price of securing the states' agreement.

  4. 4

    State the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

    Model answer

    It protects freedom of religion through the establishment and free exercise clauses, together with freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and the right to petition government.

  5. 5

    State what the Second Amendment provides.

    Model answer

    It protects the right to keep and bear arms, in wording that links that right to a well-regulated militia.

  6. 6

    What does the Fourth Amendment protect?

    Model answer

    It protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures and normally requires a warrant supported by probable cause.

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The Nature and Sources of the British Constitution
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AA US court can strike down a hostile law using the constitution.
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Veto means formal rejection of legislation.
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Civil Rights in the USA revision questions

What does Civil Rights in the USA cover in AQA A-Level Politics?
6 subtopics: civil liberties, civil rights and the bill of rights, entrenchment, incorporation and the rights amendments, landmark rights rulings and the supreme court, the civil rights movement, rights groups and the courts and contested rights issues today. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
How is Civil Rights in the USA organised?
By the AQA 7152 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.

Every question in Civil Rights in the USA, on a schedule.

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