Grade 12 · printable course

Foundations of American Government and Civic Life

Grade 12 · 329 pages · 37 lessons · PDF, print at home

A one-semester capstone course examining the constitutional structure, institutions, and civic practices of American government. Students analyze primary source documents (the Constitution, Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers, Supreme Court opinions) to understand how constitutional design channels political conflict, trace how the three branches and federalism actually operate versus how they are described on paper, and examine the rights of individuals against government power. The course closes with an applied unit on political participation, media, and public policy in which students research and present on a contested policy question, presenting multiple legitimate positions rather than a single correct answer. Contested political questions are presented by steelmanning each side; the course does not adjudicate them.

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Every unit and lesson in this book, in order. The same lessons are taught online at lettersanddevotion.com, so a family can move between paper and screen.

Foundations of American Government and Civic Life

37 lessons · try a lesson online free

Unit 1: Constitutional Design: Power, Limits, and Federalism9 lessons
  1. 1.The distinction between separation of powers and checks and balances as applied to specific constitutional text
  2. 2.The enumerated, implied, and reserved powers categories and their textual sources
  3. 3.The enumerated, implied, and reserved powers framework
  4. 4.The tension between national uniformity and state autonomy under federalism
  5. 5.Application of the Supremacy Clause and Tenth Amendment to an unfamiliar federalism conflict
  6. 6.Originalism versus living constitutionalism as competing interpretive methods applied to a specific clause
  7. 7.The central arguments of a specific Federalist and a specific Anti-Federalist paper on the same design feature
  8. 8.The relationship between a specific constitutional design choice (e.g., bicameralism or federalism) and the underlying tradeoff it reflects
  9. 9.Popular sovereignty and constitutionalism as foundational principles named in the Constitution's text
Unit 2: The Three Branches in Practice: Institutions and Power in Action10 lessons
  1. 10.The holding and reasoning of Marbury v. Madison establishing judicial review
  2. 11.The classification of judicial review as an implied power
  3. 12.The mechanism (judicial review, veto override, legislative statute, or political settlement) that resolved a named inter-branch conflict
  4. 13.The gap between constitutional war powers allocation and actual presidential practice
  5. 14.The specific reporting and 60/90-day withdrawal provisions of the War Powers Resolution
  6. 15.The role of inter-branch incentive and political context, not formal power alone, in constraining presidential action
  7. 16.The formal legislative process and the points at which gridlock typically occurs
  8. 17.The normative question of whether gridlock represents designed friction or institutional failure, applied to an unfamiliar case
  9. 18.The delegation of rulemaking authority from Congress to executive agencies (the bureaucracy)
  10. 19.The operation of stare decisis and the conditions under which the Court departs from precedent
Unit 3: Rights, Liberties, and the Limits of Government Power9 lessons
  1. 20.The distinction between civil liberties and civil rights
  2. 21.Selective incorporation as a case-by-case historical process
  3. 22.The scrutiny-level decision procedure
  4. 23.The scrutiny-level decision procedure
  5. 24.Doctrinal tests that distinguish conflicting-outcome case pairs on the same right
  6. 25.Classification-detection in equal protection fact patterns
  7. 26.Institutional authority to resolve novel rights conflicts
  8. 27.Steelmanning an opposing institutional-authority argument
  9. 28.Due process and equal protection definitions
Unit 4: Civic Participation, Media, and Public Policy9 lessons
  1. 29.Incumbency advantage as a structural feature of elections (name recognition, fundraising networks, franking privilege, redistricting effects)
  2. 30.Collective action and resource-based (not membership-based) interest-group influence
  3. 31.Media framing as selection and salience distinct from factual accuracy
  4. 32.The policy process sequence and the leverage points within it
  5. 33.Public opinion polling as a modeled estimate sensitive to question wording and sampling, not a direct readout
  6. 34.Jurisdictional authority over a novel contested policy question
  7. 35.Steel-manning of opposing legitimate policy positions in a novel context
  8. 36.The distinction between framing choice and factual claim, applied to another student's original analysis
  9. 37.Unit vocabulary: interest group, lobbying, public opinion, agenda-setting, framing, incumbency

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