40 Vocab Terms

1. Perjury: Lying in a court after having taken an oath or affirmation.

2. Pork-barrel Legislation: a government appropriation, bill, or policy that supplies

funds for local improvements designed to ingratiate legislators with their
constituents.

3. Expressed powers: powers that are directly stated

in the constitution

4. Necessary and Proper Clause: A section of the United States Constitution that
enables Congress to make the laws required for the exercise of its other powers
established by the Constitution.

5. Appropriations: The act of setting aside money for a specific purpose.

6. Interstate Commerce: any work involving or related to the movement of persons or

things (including intangibles, such as information) across state lines or from
foreign countries.

7. 25th Amendment: When the office of the VP becomes empty the president must
appoint a replacement.

8. Rider: provisions on a subject other that the one covered by a bill. Usually dont
have to do with the bill and occurs at the end of a session

9. Veto: When the President refuses to sign a bill and returns it to congress including
reasons for this action

10. Standing Committee: A permanent committee

11. Select Committee: A temporary committee

12. Joint Committee: A committee made up of members of both chambers in a

bicameral legislature

13. Cloture: closes a debate

14. Ways and Means Committee: A permanent committee of the House of

Representatives, which makes recommendations to the House on all bills for
raising revenue.

15. Appropriation: a sum of money or total of assets devoted to a special purpose.

16. Lobbying seek to influence (a politician or public official) on an issue.

17. PACs: Political Actions Committee (Fund-raising etc..)

18. Concurrent resolution: Deals with matters where laws arent needed. Require
action of house and Senate

19. Speaker of the House: the presiding officer of the United States House of
Representatives.

20. The Great Compromise: an agreement that large and small states reached during
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure
and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution.

21. Federalism: the federal principle or system of government.

22. Confederation: an organization that consists of a number of parties or groups

united in an alliance or league.

23. Reserved Powers a political power reserved by a constitution to the exclusive

jurisdiction of a specified political authority

24. Concurrent Powers: powers in nations with a federal system of government that
are shared by both the State and the federal government.

25. Judicial Review: review by the US Supreme Court of the constitutional validity of
a legislative act

26. Conservative: a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and
attitudes

27. Liberal: open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

28. Political Parties: as an organized group of people with at least roughly similar
political aims and opinions, that seeks to influence public policy by getting its
candidates elected to public office.

29. Super Tuesday: a day on which several US states hold primary elections.

30. Electoral College: a body of electors chosen or appointed by a larger group.

31. Voting Rights Act of 1965: A law passed at the time of the civil rights movement.
It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used
to restrict voting by black people.

32. Earmarks: a congressional directive that funds should be spent on a specific

project.

33. Pocket Veto: an indirect veto of a legislative bill by the president or a governor by
retaining the bill unsigned until it is too late for it to be dealt with during the
legislative session.

34. Plea Bargaining: an arrangement between a prosecutor and a defendant whereby

the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge in the expectation of leniency.

35. Appellate Jurisdiction: the power of a court to review decisions and change
outcomes of decisions of lower courts.

36. Judicial Restraint: theory of judicial interpretation that encourages judges to limit
the exercise of their own power. It asserts that judges should hesitate to strike
down laws unless they are obviously unconstitutional, though what counts as
obviously unconstitutional is itself a matter of some debate.

37. Judicial Activist: when judges deny legislators or the executive the power to do
something unconstitutional.

38. Writ of Certiorari: A decision by the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from a
lower court.

39. Bureaucracy: a system of government in which most of the important decisions are
made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.

40. Constitutional Government: government that is defined by the existence of a

constitution