CRCL - Understanding AP U.S. Government & Politics Unit 3 Lesson
Understanding AP U.S. Government & Politics Unit 3
There are 5 units of study defined by the College Board. Your course modules will fall into one of these five units. This third unit is Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and 13-18% of the AP Exam questions will come from this unit. Here's what you should know:
Developing Understanding
Students will connect the founding principles of our government to the debates over the appropriate balance of liberty and order, noting how citizens and other groups have pursued policy solutions to protect the civil liberties and civil rights of all Americans, laying the foundation for later discussions about other ways citizens can participate in the government.
The U.S. Constitution, primarily through the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, protects the civil liberties and civil rights of citizens, though the extent of those protections and the need to protect the safety and general welfare of individuals has long been debated. Through social movements, legal challenges, and acts of Congress, citizens have attempted to restrict the government from unduly infringing on individual rights and from denying equal protection under the law.
| Big Idea 1 | Big Idea 3 | Big Idea 4 |
| Constitutionalism | Civic Participation in a Representative Democracy | Competing Policymaking Interests |
|
In what ways does the Constitution attempt to limit abuse of government powers? |
How can individuals and groups help protect civil liberties and civil rights? |
Why have Supreme Court decisions about civil liberties and civil rights changed over time? |
Building the Course Skills
This unit focuses on the analysis and application of SCOTUS cases. In addition to knowing the facts and decision of the required SCOTUS cases, students should analyze the majority opinion, focusing on the constitutional issues (such as the various interpretations of the Bill of Rights, including the due process clause) considered by the justices. This level of knowledge allows students to think like political scientists and compare two cases that relate to the same constitutional issue and draw conclusions about why the Supreme Court may have ruled in a similar or different way in each case.
Students continue to develop the skill of argumentation in this unit by using relevant evidence to support their claim. When using documents as evidence, students should not focus on summarizing the content of a document, but instead on explaining the significance of the evidence and explaining how and why it supports the claim and line of reasoning.
Preparing for the AP Exam
The SCOTUS comparison free-response question on the AP Exam asks students to go beyond simply identifying the similarities and differences between cases. They apply information from a required case and explain how that information is relevant to a nonrequired case. Then, students demonstrate the ability to transfer understanding of political concepts, behaviors, or processes from a required Supreme Court case to a non-required one.
Students should be able to use the required Supreme Court cases in other ways, such as applying knowledge about a required case to a reading, a scenario, and possibly a political cartoon. Students often struggle with analyzing political cartoons. They should practice interpreting visual clues and then using these clues to determine the argument and relate it to political principles, institutions, processes, or behaviors.
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