AP Government Required Documents

The principle that states each branch of government has the ability to limit the power of the other branches

• Checks & Balances

• Federalism

• Popular Sovereignty

• Separation of Powers

The principle that states federal and state governments must share powers

• Checks & Balances

• Republicanism

• Federalism

• Popular Sovereignty

These are personal liberties (freedoms) and privileges that should be guaranteed to every citizen

• Individual Rights

• Separation of Powers

• Limited Government

• Popular Sovereignty

A government in which the people rule, the authority of the government comes from the people

• Checks & Balances

• Popular Sovereignty

• Federalism

• Separation of Powers

This idea calls for the people to exercise or delegate their power by electing or voting for their political representation

• Limited Government

• Separation of Powers

• Republicanism

• Federalism

This principle states that the government should be divided into 3 branches: legislative, judicial, and executive

• Popular Sovereignty

• Separation of Powers

• Limited Government

• Checks & Balances

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community"

• Federalist #10

• Federalist #51

• Federalist #70

• Federalist #78

“But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty—if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.”

• Declaration of Independence

• Articles of Confederation

• Brutus #1

• Federalist #10

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary”

• Federalist #10

• Federalist #51

• Federalist #70

• Federalist #78

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”

• Declaration of Independence

• Articles of Confederation

• U.S. Constitution

• Letter from Birmingham Jail