Unit V: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Overview: Topics of study include; the formations and development of rights throughout
U.S. history, the impact of citizen behavior in the process, and the role of the courts in
determining our civil liberties. The concepts of judicial restraint and judicial activism will be
analyzed by the students. Students will gain an understanding of the institutional guarantees to
political and civil rights granted under the Constitution; the rights conferred by the Americ an
government system; key Supreme Court cases and arguments regarding constitutional protections;
the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment on civil rights at the state level; and the impact of
judicial decisions on American society.
Students will examine judicial interpretations of various civil rights and liberties such as freedom
of speech, assembly, and expression; the rights of the accused; and the rights of minority groups
and women. Students will also gain an understanding of how the Fourteenth Amendment and the
doctrine of selective incorporation have been used to extend protection of rights and liberties.
Finally, students will able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Supreme Court decisions as
tools of social change.
Readings and Materials:
o Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment
o Edwards Chapters 4,5
o Wesley Phelan Reading
o Supreme Court decisions and opinions on civil rights and civil liberties
Dates
March
7/8
March
9/10
March
11/14
March
15/16
T opic
Reading Material Due
The First Amendment
and Civil Liberties
Edwards Chapter 4
March
17/18
March
21/22
March
23/29
March
30/31
Apri1
1/4
April
5/6
Civil Rights
Wesley Phelan, “Historical
Overview: The Fourteenth
Amendment and the Selective
Incorporation of the Bill of
Rights”
Written Homework Due
Vocabulary Set 1
Reading Quiz
Free Response Question
Edwards Chapter 5
Vocabulary Set 2
Reading Quiz
Study Guide Questions
Watch Video – Eyes on the
Prize. Link found on Website.
1 page summary of Video.
Multiple Choice Exam
Vocabulary Set 1
1st amendment, 4th amendment, 5th amendment, 6th amendment, 8th amendment, 14th amendment, bill of
attainder, Civil liberty, due process, eminent domain, Engle v. Vitale , Escobedo v. Illinois, establishment
clause, exclusionary rule, ex post facto law, free exercise clause, Gideon v. Wainwright, Gitlow v. New
York, incorporation doctrine, Mapp v. Ohio , Miranda v. Arizona, prior restraint, selective incorporation,
self-incrimination, shield laws, symbolic speech
FRQ
Define Selective Incorporation.
Explain how each has been incorporated (use Supreme Court case for each):
 Rights of criminal defendants:
 First Amendment:
 Privacy rights
Vocabulary Set 2
19th amendment, 24th amendment, Affirmative action, Bakke v. California, Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka, KA, Civil rights, Civil Rights Act of 1964, comparable worth, coverture, de facto segregation, de
jure segregation, equal protection clause, Equal Rights Amendment, fifteenth amendment, Griswold v.
Connecticut, Jim Crow Laws, NAACP, rational basis test, reverse discrimination, Richmond v. Croson ,
Right to privacy, Roe v. Wade, separate but equal doctrine, suffrage, suspect categories, Title VII, Title
IX, United Steel Workers v. Weber, Voting Rights Act of 1965
Study Guide Questions
1. How have decisions of the Supreme Court have extended specific provisions of
the Bill of Rights to the states as part of the incorporation doctrine?
2. Describe how the two constitutional statements about religion and government—the
establishment clause and the free exercise clause—may sometimes conflict.
3. Why will the Supreme Court will usually not permit prior restraint on speech and
Press? Explain why it has been so difficult for the courts to clearly define which types of
materials are considered to be obscene.
4. How can conflict occur between free speech and public order? Determine how essential rights such as the
right to a fair trial can conflict with other rights such as the right to a free press.
5. Explain how specific provisions of the Bill of Rights have been used to extend basic rights to defendants in
criminal trials.
6. How have civil rights have been used to extend more equality to groups that historically have been subject to
discrimination.
7. Analyze different interpretations of equality, such as equality of opportunity contrasted with equality of
results. Explain how the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” has been applied
to the idea of equality.
8. Summarize the reasoning of the Court in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education and use this case to
show how the Court set aside its earlier precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson .
9. Show the significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and explain why efforts for civil rights legislation were
finally successful in the mid-1960s.
10. Trace the attempts of southern states to deny African Americans the right to vote even after the passage of
the Fifteenth Amendment.
11. Identify the major public policy milestones in the movement toward gender equality.
12. Determine the ways in which Americans with disabilities have become the successors to the civil rights
movement.
13. Describe the opposing positions of those who favor affirmative action and those who claim that these
policies simply create reverse discrimination.
14. Analyze how the important democratic principles of equality and individual liberty may actually conflict
with each other.