Chapter 38 — Self-Check Quiz

Twelve multiple-choice questions and four short-answer questions. Answers and brief explanations follow each question.

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following Supreme Court reforms can be accomplished by ordinary statute, with no constitutional amendment required?

a) Eliminating life tenure for sitting justices b) Adding seats to the Supreme Court (Court expansion) c) Removing the Court's appellate jurisdiction over an entire subject matter, without limit d) Abolishing judicial review of acts of Congress

Answer: b. The Constitution does not specify the size of the Court; Congress sets the number by statute, and the number has changed by statute throughout American history. Life tenure (a) is generally read to require a constitutional amendment for sitting justices. Aggressive jurisdiction-stripping (c) raises constitutional questions about the Court's core constitutional role. Abolishing judicial review (d) would conflict with Marbury v. Madison and the Court's continuing reading of its own constitutional function.

2. The Senate's equal-state representation (two senators per state regardless of population) is constitutionally protected by:

a) The Tenth Amendment b) The Connecticut Compromise as historically established c) Article V's entrenchment clause ("no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate") d) The Reconstruction-era Fourteenth Amendment

Answer: c. Article V contains the most explicit entrenchment clause in the Constitution. It provides that no state, without its consent, can be deprived of equal Senate representation — even by constitutional amendment.

3. The Electoral Count Reform Act, passed in December 2022, did all of the following EXCEPT:

a) Clarify that the Vice President's role in counting electoral votes is purely ceremonial b) Raise the threshold for objections to electoral votes from 1 senator + 1 representative to 20% of each chamber c) Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote d) Narrow the categories of valid grounds for objecting to a state's electoral votes

Answer: c. The ECRA addressed loopholes in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 but left the Electoral College itself unchanged. Abolition would require a constitutional amendment.

a) Has already taken effect and is binding on all participating states in every presidential election b) Is an agreement among states to award their electors to the national popular-vote winner, taking effect only when signatory states total 270 electoral votes c) Was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court in 2020 d) Requires a constitutional amendment to take effect

Answer: b. As of early 2026, signatory states represent roughly 209 electoral votes; the compact takes effect only when 270 are reached. Constitutional questions about whether it requires congressional consent under the Compact Clause remain unsettled.

5. The Supreme Court adopted its first-ever Code of Conduct in:

a) November 2018 b) November 2023 c) June 2022 d) The Supreme Court has not adopted a Code of Conduct

Answer: b. The Court adopted a Code of Conduct in November 2023 — the first explicit Court-level ethics code in American history. Critics across the spectrum have noted that the code lacks an enforcement mechanism.

6. The Senate filibuster, as currently practiced:

a) Is required by Article I of the Constitution b) Has been used at constant levels throughout American history c) Evolved gradually and reached current form through the cloture-reform amendments of 1917 and 1975, and is a Senate rule that the Senate can change d) Was created by the Reorganization Act of 1946

Answer: c. The filibuster is not constitutionally required. It evolved through Senate rules and reached current form through cloture reforms in the twentieth century. The Senate has carved out exceptions (budget reconciliation since 1974; nominations since 2013/2017) by rule changes, demonstrating that the rule is alterable.

7. The 1967 federal law that mandates single-member congressional districts (and would need to be repealed for multimember congressional districts) is:

a) The Voting Rights Act of 1965 b) The Help America Vote Act of 2002 c) The Uniform Congressional District Act, 2 U.S.C. § 2c d) The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002

Answer: c. The Uniform Congressional District Act, 2 U.S.C. § 2c (1967), mandates single-member congressional districts. Repeal would be by ordinary statute but would require political coalition that does not currently exist.

8. Among the structural conditions that the chapter identifies as predictive of bipartisan reform success, which is NOT included?

a) Narrow scope rather than comprehensive b) The threat addressed is shared rather than partisan-coded c) The proposal does not visibly advantage one party d) The proposal is endorsed by all major academic political scientists

Answer: d. Academic endorsement is not on the list; sustained coalition willingness to invest political capital is. The four conditions are narrow scope, shared threat, no visible partisan advantage, and sustained coalition.

9. Statehood for the District of Columbia:

a) Is straightforward — Congress can admit states under Article IV, Section 3 b) Faces constitutional questions specific to D.C. because the Constitution contemplates a federal district housing only the federal government c) Was approved by Congress in 2021 d) Requires unanimous consent of all current states

Answer: b. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 contemplates a federal district that houses the federal government. Whether D.C. statehood is constitutionally permissible by statute (with the federal district reduced to the immediate Capitol/White House perimeter) or requires a constitutional amendment is contested. Puerto Rican statehood (c is wrong) is constitutionally easier but is conditional on Puerto Rican popular consent.

10. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) is significant because it:

a) Expanded Chevron deference to executive-branch agencies b) Overturned Chevron deference, requiring courts to determine the best reading of statutes rather than deferring to agency interpretations c) Codified the Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court d) Established the major-questions doctrine

Answer: b. Loper Bright (2024) overturned Chevron v. NRDC (1984), holding that courts must determine the best reading of statutes rather than deferring to reasonable agency interpretations. The major-questions doctrine (d) had been emerging in cases like West Virginia v. EPA (2022) before Loper Bright.

11. Eitan Hersh's distinction in Politics Is for Power (2020) is between:

a) Republicans and Democrats b) Federal and state politics c) "Political hobbyism" (consuming and posting about politics) and "political work" (organizing, voting, attending local meetings) d) Liberal and conservative ideology

Answer: c. Hersh's argument is that much of what counts as political engagement in the 2020s is political hobbyism — consumption-based engagement that produces no electoral or policy outcome — while the work of organizing, voting in primaries, and attending local meetings is where outcomes are actually produced.

12. The 2021 Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States:

a) Recommended court packing b) Recommended eighteen-year staggered terms c) Produced a balanced analysis with no policy recommendation d) Recommended jurisdiction-stripping

Answer: c. The commission, co-chaired by Bob Bauer and Cristina Rodriguez with members ranging across the ideological spectrum (Jack Goldsmith, Caleb Nelson, Laurence Tribe, Sherrilyn Ifill), produced a thorough analysis but did not endorse a particular reform.

Short Answer

13. Distinguish between reforms that require constitutional amendment and reforms that require only ordinary legislation. Give one example of each from this chapter.

Sample answer. Constitutional amendment is required for any change that alters the constitutional text — Senate apportionment (Article V's entrenchment clause makes this nearly absolutely entrenched), the Electoral College (Article II, Section 1), congressional term limits (per U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 1995). Ordinary legislation suffices for changes within Congress's enumerated powers — Court expansion (Congress sets the size of the Court by statute), filibuster reform (Senate rule), permitting reform (statutory). Some reforms are contested between the two categories — Supreme Court term limits (some scholars argue statutory; most argue constitutional) and D.C. statehood (some scholars argue statutory; some argue amendment-required). The classification matters because it predicts feasibility: amendment requires two-thirds of both chambers plus three-quarters of states; statute requires only majorities (with filibuster considerations).

14. Steel-man one progressive reform proposal and one conservative reform proposal. The reforms must come from different sides of the spectrum.

Sample answer (one of many possible). Progressive: small-donor matching for federal campaigns. The progressive case for small-donor matching is that it expands the donor base of campaigns, reduces dependence on large donors and bundlers, and addresses the empirical finding that members of Congress allocate disproportionate meeting time to donors. Maine, Connecticut, Arizona have adopted similar systems with mixed but generally positive results on donor diversity and (in some studies) on the demographic representativeness of donors. The reform does not abolish private giving, does not regulate speech, and operates entirely within constitutional limits set by Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo. Conservative: the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). The conservative case for REINS is that the cumulative regulatory state has grown over time without commensurate congressional discipline, and that major rules with significant economic effects should require legislative ratification. The proposal restores constitutional separation of powers by ensuring that legislative-scale decisions receive legislative consideration. The mechanism — a defined economic threshold above which congressional approval is required — is administratively workable.

15. The chapter argues that some "big" reforms (constitutional convention, abolishing the Electoral College, court packing, statehood expansion) are contested precisely because their effects are uncertain. Pick one and explain the uncertainty.

Sample answer. Constitutional convention. Article V allows two-thirds of state legislatures to call a convention. The mechanism has never been used. The unresolved questions: Once convened, would a convention be bound by the topics of the call (the proponents' position) or could it become a "runaway" convention drafting amendments on any subject (the critics' position)? Three-quarters of states would still be required to ratify whatever the convention produces, providing a brake — but the legitimacy implications of a convention that exceeded its mandate could be severe. Both proponents (Mark Levin, Convention of States Action) and critics (Larry Sabato, the late Phyllis Schlafly) have made serious arguments. The uncertainty, not partisan alignment, is the analytical heart of the question.

16. The chapter ends with a section on civic engagement, drawing on Hersh and Tocqueville. What is the relationship between structural reform and civic engagement?

Sample answer. Structural reform changes the rules; civic engagement determines who shows up to play within those rules. The relationship is not substitutive: civic engagement does not replace structural reform, and structural reform does not eliminate the need for civic engagement. The Tocquevillian point is that voluntary associations, local-meeting attendance, primary-election turnout, and participation in civic life are the layer in which structural reform is built. Most structural reforms fail. The civic-engagement layer operates continuously and produces continuous effects. Hersh's distinction between political hobbyism and political work names the failure mode: consumption-based engagement (posting, consuming political media, expressing identity) produces no outcomes; work-based engagement (organizing, voting, attending) does. Both reform and engagement are necessary; neither is sufficient.

Scoring guide

  • 12/12 multiple choice + 4/4 short answer well-developed: mastery
  • 10/12 + 3/4: solid understanding
  • Below 8/12: review the chapter, particularly the constitutional difficulty classifications in 38.3–38.6 and the bipartisan vs. partisan-coded analysis in 38.11