Institutional Relationships - AP Government and Politics

The system of checks and balances is the way that the U.S. government balances power between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. It is known as such because of the way that each branch is able to check the others and balance them out if one gains too much power over another.

Executive privilege allows the president and other important members of the Executive branch to withhold information from, and refuse to testify to, Congress. It is most relevant in U.S. History to the refusal of Richard Nixon to provide certain evidence to Congress during his trial over the Watergate incident.

The only man to serve as both President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was William H. Taft. Taft became President following the end of Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidency, but had always favored a position on the Supreme Court and was something of a reluctant President. He lasted only one term as President and was granted his wish to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1921, when he was nominated by President Harding. He would serve as Chief Justice for nine years until his ill health forced him to step down shortly before his death. As a Chief Justice Taft, encouraged the Judiciary Act of 1925, which expanded the Supreme Court’s power to give priority to cases that they considered of national importance.

The War Powers Act of 1973 was designed to eliminate the president’s ability to unilaterally declare war or commit the armed forces without the prescribed support of Congress. It was issued in response to the United States’ prolonged involvement in Korea and Vietnam, both conflicts that occurred without a formal declaration of war being issued by Congress.

Judicial review establishes that the judicial branch of the government has the right to analyze the constitutionality of certain actions undertaken by the legislative and executive branches of government. It is part of the checks and balances aspect of American government that ensures that no one branch of the United States government can wield absolute power at the expense of the other two branches.

In the 1824 election none of the major candidates gained a clear majority; however, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams emerged as the two leading candidates in the popular vote. Due to the lack of a clear winner, the election had to be decided in the House of Representatives. Henry Clay, himself a candidate in the election, allegedly offered his support to John Quincy Adams, helping him win the Presidency, In exchange, Clay was made Adams’ Secretary of State. Andrew Jackson would campaign, partially, on the platform of the "corrupt-bargain" in the next election, 1828.

In a Unified Government, in contrast to a Divided Government, the Legislative and Executive Branches are both controlled by the same party. This allows much more legislation to get passed. In a Divided Government, one of the parties controls Congress and the other controls the Presidency. This often leads to gridlock.

A coalition government occurs more often in Parliamentary systems than it does in the American system, but it has occurred previously on rare occasions throughout American history. A coalition government occurs when a group of smaller parties or interest groups work together and combine their representation in order to form a majority in Congress.

The name given to a Legislative grant of money to finance a specific government program is "appropriations."

A President can be impeached only under very specific circumstances. First the House must vote for impeachment by a simple majority, but, this simply states that the President must stand trial, so the case moves to the Senate, where the trial takes place. A two-thirds vote is needed in the Senate to remove the President from office.

Andrew Johnson was the President who had to deal with the reunification of the North and South during the inaugural years of Reconstruction. In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited the President from removing his own appointed officials from office. Johnson ignored this act when he removed his secretary of war and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. He was impeached by the House as a result, and was almost removed from office, surviving the trial in the Senate by one vote.

An iron triangle involves the policy-making relationship among a Congressional committee, the bureaucracy, and an interest group. The committee provides funding and political support to the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy provides low regulation and special favors to the interest group, and the interest group provides electoral support to the committee. In return, the bureaucracy provides policy choices and execution to the committee, the committee provides friendly legislation and oversight to the interest group, and the interest group provides congressional support (via lobbying) to the bureaucracy.

Annual authorizations are budgets established by Congress for various government agencies on a yearly basis.

This is an incredibly interesting story. Essentially, there were four justices on the Supreme Court, Butler, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Van Devanter, who were extremely conservative. They always voted in a bloc, and nearly always voted to strike down FDRs New Deal legislation. This earned them the name “the Four Horsemen.” Since they always voted in a bloc (and there were four of them) it took only one other justice to disagree with the legislation to cobble together a majority and strike the law down. During the beginning of the New Deal era, this happened relatively frequently, much to FDR’s chagrin.

Seeing no end in sight, and getting more frustrated by the day, FDR managed to come up with what he thought was a solution: get Congress to pass a bill that added more members to the Supreme Court. As President, he could appoint them, and since Congress was overwhelmingly Democrat, the Senate would likely confirm his appointees.

So, FDR comes up with a plan for a bill: craft a piece of legislation under the ruse of helping the poor, old, enfeebled members of the Supreme Court. His “subtle” bill would have allowed him to appoint 1 new associate justice for every justice over the age of 70 years, up to a total of 6 additional members. Nearly everyone saw the bill for what it was, and it quickly earned the derisive moniker of the “court packing plan,” as it would have allowed him to “pack” the court with like-minded justices, and thus his New Deal legislation would pass. It didn’t pass Congress.

The Supreme Court and the Cabinet are two bodies appointed by the President, and so they do not have the power to approve these appointments. The House of Representatives and the Vice President also do not have this power. The power to offer “advice and consent” on the issue of presidential appointments is reserved by the Senate, according to Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution.

A line-item veto is when the President simply vetoes a portion of a piece of proposed legislation, and then sends it back to Congress for approval. This way the whole piece does not have to be redrafted, and legislators simply have to agree on whether the portion vetoed is necessary or not.

The Constitution specifically requires the “advice and consent” (that’s the actual language, hence the quotation marks) of the Senate when ratification of a treaty is at hand. In other words, in order for our country to successfully reach a treaty with another country, the Senate must give their “advice and consent.” In slightly more concrete terms, the Senate must approve (or ‘ratify’) the treaty by a supermajority ( vote). This, as you can imagine, is a rather difficult task. It has caused the embarrassment of one President in particular: Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson failed to gain Senate approval of the Treaty of Versailles, and his brainchild, the League of Nations. This was rather embarrassing to President Wilson, as he had essentially stumped around Europe campaigning for the League of Nations only to have his own country fail to back him.

This is an interesting, and somewhat convoluted question. As the prompt says, the President’s ability to wage war is technically checked by Congress’ ability to declare war (i.e. ONLY Congress can declare war). That said, there have been a total of 0 declared wars since WWII. Yes, you read that correctly, zero. What about Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, etc etc?

The answer lies in the President’s ability to direct troop movement (as the Commander-in-chief). Very long story short, the president can technically skirt the issue of a declared war by directing troops to go somewhere and intervene—this is often called an “armed conflict.”

Congress attempted to reign in the President’s unfettered ability to create/aid in armed conflicts by passing the War Powers Act of 1973, which imposed various procedural hurdles on a President attempting to move troops for that purpose.

This should have been a relatively simple question. When both the president and the majority of both chambers of congress belong to the same political party, we refer to this as “unified government.” The name, of course, makes sense, because—as they’re both of the same party—government is unified. Whenever government is unified, there’s a greater chance of increased legislation and reform (do you see why?).

This should have been a relatively simple question. Divided government is the exact opposite of unified government—not too shocking, given the name. Because both the president and either one or both chambers of Congress are of two different political parties, it becomes much more difficult to create and pass legislation, leading to gridlock.