Constitutional Trivia Quiz
The Eleventh Amendment (1795) specifically prohibits federal courts from doing whatA: Hearing cases in which a state is sued by an individual from another state or another country, thus extending to the states sovereign immunity protection from certain types of legal liability.
The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) removed existing Constitutional constraints that limited the power of Congress to do what?
A: Lay and collect taxes on income.
The Eighteenth Amendment (1919) prohibited the making, transporting, and selling of what?
A: Alcoholic beverages nationwide.
It also authorized Congress to enact legislation for what?
A: Enforcing this prohibition.
In what year was the Twenty-first amendment repealed?
A: 1933
The Twenty-first Amendment (1933) repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and did what?
A: Returned the regulation of alcohol to the states.
Each state sets its own rules for the sale and importation of alcohol, including the what?
A: Drinking age.
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as what?
A: Punishment for a crime, and it also authorized Congress to enforce abolition.
Congress intended the Thirteenth Amendment to be a proclamation of what?
A: Freedom for all slaves throughout the nation and to take the question of emancipation away from politics.
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted United States citizenship to whom?
A: Former slaves and to all persons "subject to U.S. jurisdiction".
It also contained what three new limits on state power?
A: A state shall not violate a citizen's privileges or immunities; shall not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; and must guarantee all persons equal protection of the laws.
The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) prohibits the use of race, color, or previous condition of servitude in determining which citizens may do what?
A: Vote.
The last of three post Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, it sought to abolish one of the what?
A: Key vestiges of slavery and to advance the civil rights and liberties of former slaves.
The Nineteenth Amendment (1920) prohibits the government from doing what?
A: Denying women the right to vote on the same terms as men.
Prior to the amendment's adoption, only a few states permitted women to what?
A: Vote and to hold office.
The Twenty-third Amendment (1961) extends the right to vote in presidential elections to citizens residing where?
A: In the District of Columbia.
When first established as the nation's capital in 1800, the District of Columbia's five thousand residents had neither a local government, nor what?
A: The right to vote in federal elections.
By 1960 the population of the District had grown to over how many people?
A: 760,000.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) prohibits a what?
A: Poll tax for voting.
Although passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments helped remove many of the discriminatory laws left over from slavery, they did not what?
A: Eliminate all forms of discrimination.
Along with literacy tests and durational residency requirements, poll taxes were used to do what?
A: Keep low-income (primarily African American) citizens from participating in elections.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) prohibits the government from doing what?
A: Denying the right of United States citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age.
The drive to lower the voting age was driven in large part by what?
A: The broader student activism movement protesting the Vietnam War.
