Unit 2 Review: How national institutions share power and fight over it

UNIT 2 · INSTITUTIONS

UNIT 2 REVIEW

How national institutions share power and fight over it

National institutions rarely act alone. A bill needs both chambers of Congress to agree before a president ever sees it. A president’s formal powers work through appointments, vetoes, and command of the armed forces, and each of those tools has a check attached to it. Courts review what elected officials and agencies do, while depending on precedent and appointments for their own staying power. Agencies turn broad statutes into working rules, and Congress, the president, and courts all watch how they do it.

This review moves across the whole unit: chamber structure and lawmaking, presidential power and its limits, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and the single policy pathway that ties all four together.

THE UNIT IN ONE TABLE

Table UR2.1 How the four institutions covered in this unit operate.

CONCEPT APPLICATION: A STALLED NOMINATION

A president nominates a federal judge. The Senate Judiciary Committee delays scheduling a confirmation vote for over a year, and the seat remains vacant.

Part A. Identify the constitutional check the Senate is exercising.

Advice and consent over presidential appointments, exercised here by declining to move the nomination forward rather than by voting it down directly.

Part B. Explain why this check does not require the Senate to hold a public vote to be effective.

The Senate’s control over its own scheduling means simply not bringing a nomination to a vote can block it as effectively as a formal rejection, since a nomination that never receives a vote never receives confirmation.

UNIT 2 PRACTICE SET

Correct: B. Each state has two senators regardless of population, unlike the House’s population-based apportionment. A) That figure describes the House’s total membership, not the Senate. C) House members serve two-year terms; senators serve six. D) The House, not the Senate, holds the sole power of impeachment.

Correct: C. Presentment requires both chambers to have passed the same text. A) The president can only sign one agreed text, not choose between two versions. B) Courts do not select legislative text. D) A bill is not law until identical text is passed by both chambers and signed.

Correct: A. Following constituent input closely, even against the party’s position, reflects delegate-style representation. B) Judicial review is unrelated to congressional voting behavior. C) Trustee representation would mean independent judgment overriding constituent pressure, the opposite pattern shown here. D) The scenario shows constituent pressure winning out over party position, not the reverse.

Correct: D. An executive agreement does not require the two-thirds Senate approval a treaty requires. A) This scenario describes an agreement made without congressional involvement at all. B) A treaty requires Senate advice and consent by two-thirds; this bypasses that process. C) Executive agreements are a recognized presidential tool, not inherently unconstitutional.

Correct: C. 58 votes falls short of the two-thirds, 67 votes in a hundred-member Senate, required for conviction. A) The House’s role ends at impeachment; it does not vote again to approve a Senate conviction. B) No automatic repeat vote is required. D) A 58-vote majority does not meet the two-thirds threshold for removal.

Correct: B. Executive orders direct action within authority a president already holds; they do not create independent legislative power. A) Executive orders do not automatically expire with a new Congress. C) Executive orders require no congressional vote at all. D) Courts can and do review executive orders.

Correct: D. Appealing directly to the public to build outside pressure on Congress is the going-public strategy. A) A veto threat concerns bills reaching the president’s desk, not building outside public pressure. B) The treaty power involves foreign agreements, not domestic bargaining strategy. C) Judicial review is a court function.

8. Which of the following most accurately describes the constitutional basis for judicial review? A) The Supreme Court established judicial review through its own interpretation in Marbury v. Madison B) Congress granted courts the power of judicial review by statute C) Judicial review was created by a constitutional amendment D) Article III explicitly grants courts the power to strike down unconstitutional laws

Correct: A. Marbury v. Madison established judicial review through the Court’s own reasoning, not a grant of power written into Article III’s text. B) No statute created judicial review; the Court established it through interpretation. C) No amendment created judicial review. D) Article III does not explicitly grant this power.

Correct: C. Narrowing a precedent’s application without overruling it is an example of distinguishing. A) Certiorari concerns whether to hear a case, not how precedent is applied. B) No amendment is described. D) Narrowing a rule shows precedent is not treated as absolute.

Correct: A. Article III judges serve during good behavior rather than a fixed term, commonly called life tenure. B) Federal judges are not popularly elected. C) There is no fixed twelve-year term. D) There is no constitutional mandatory retirement age for Article III judges.

Correct: B. A statutory ruling can be addressed by Congress clarifying the statute itself. A) Ignoring a ruling is not a legitimate institutional response. C) A constitutional amendment is unnecessary for a statutory disagreement. D) Disagreement with a ruling is not grounds for impeachment.

Correct: C. Agencies bring specialized expertise most members of Congress and their staff do not have. A) The president signs or vetoes bills but does not approve statutory language as a drafting requirement. B) Courts do not require this; delegation is a congressional choice. D) No such constitutional requirement exists.

Correct: D. Loper Bright overruled the older Chevron framework; courts now interpret ambiguous statutory language independently. A) Public comments inform rulemaking; they do not determine how a court interprets a statute. B) Courts do not refer statutory questions to Congress for a ruling. C) That was the older Chevron standard, no longer controlling.

Correct: A. Hearings are one of several oversight tools; document requests and GAO audits are oversight in their own right. B) The GAO, not only inspectors general, can conduct audits. C) Hearings are one of several oversight tools, not a requirement. D) Congressional oversight does not require presidential participation.

Correct: D. A remand sends the rule back for revision; it does not strip the agency of its underlying statutory authority. A) The president does not gain rule-writing authority from a court’s remand. B) Congress does not need to repass the statute; the agency can act again after revising the rule. C) The statute itself is not overturned by a court’s ruling on the agency’s rule.

Correct: B. Multiple institutions influence the same policy at different stages, so no single actor controls the whole chain. A) Nothing limits this pattern to economic regulation specifically. C) Diffuse accountability describes the structure of the process, not just failed policies. D) This overstates the agency’s exclusive responsibility.

UNIT 2 CONCEPT APPLICATION: BRINGING THE ADDED CONTENT TOGETHER

A transportation agency proposes a new safety rule. A trade association works repeatedly with the Senate committee overseeing transportation and with the agency. Career engineers at the agency were hired through competitive qualifications. After the rule takes effect, Congress orders an audit to determine whether grant recipients are following the rule.

Part A. Identify the relationship among the committee, agency, and trade association.

Iron triangle. The scenario describes a durable relationship among a congressional committee, a bureaucratic agency, and an organized interest in the same policy area.

Part B. Identify the personnel system used to hire the career engineers.

The merit system. Career civil servants are selected chiefly on qualifications, specialization, professionalism, and neutrality rather than political patronage.

Part C. Explain how the congressional audit can affect implementation.

The audit is a form of oversight and compliance monitoring. It can reveal whether funds are being used properly and whether recipients are following the rule. Congress can then use hearings, funding conditions, or statutory changes to correct noncompliance.

Part D. Explain how the trade association has more than one access point to influence policy.

It can lobby the congressional committee, submit evidence during agency rulemaking, petition executive officials about enforcement, and, if it has standing, challenge a final rule in court. The distribution of power creates several policymaking venues.

Correct: D. An issue network is a broader and more temporary coalition organized around a shared issue or agenda. A) An iron triangle is a durable, narrower relationship, not a temporary broad coalition. B) Patronage concerns political appointment, unrelated to a policy coalition. C) The merit system concerns career hiring, unrelated to a policy coalition.

Correct: C. Judicial restraint emphasizes adherence to existing constitutional and case precedent. A) Overturning precedent on the majority’s own view of correctness is closer to judicial activism. B) Expanding agency authority beyond a statute is not a judicial-restraint question at all. D) This concerns docket selection through certiorari, not interpretive philosophy.

Correct: B. The career civil service is primarily merit based; political appointees occupy a smaller set of leadership positions. A) The president appoints agency leadership, not the entire civil service. C) Patronage is a permitted practice for some positions, not a constitutional requirement. D) Congress does not hire executive-agency staff directly.

Correct: A. Presidents and states can delay implementation, limiting a decision’s immediate practical effect even though they do not erase its legal authority. B) No appropriations question is involved. C) Senatorial courtesy concerns Senate confirmation practice, unrelated to implementation delay. D) Congressional delegation concerns Congress granting authority to agencies, unrelated to this scenario.

Correct: B. The hearing is an oversight tool, and reducing appropriated funds is a direct exercise of the power of the purse; together they show Congress using two distinct tools on the same agency. A) No court is involved in this scenario. C) Executive privilege and the pocket veto are presidential tools, not congressional ones. D) Neither senatorial courtesy nor impeachment is illustrated here.