Practice all four AP Government FRQ types on Unit 1 content. Write your response, then reveal the model answer and scoring rubric to see exactly what earns each point.
"The Supremacy Clause of Article VI establishes that the Constitution and federal law are the supreme law of the land, overriding conflicting state law. In this scenario, the Biden administration's argument invokes the Supremacy Clause — if existing Supreme Court precedent established a constitutional right, Texas's law would be pre-empted by that federal constitutional standard regardless of Texas's claim of state police power."
"The 10th Amendment reserves to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government — including the police power to regulate health, safety, and morality within state borders. Texas's argument relies on this principle: because the Constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government power to regulate abortion as a medical procedure performed intrastate, Texas claims this authority belongs to the states under the 10th Amendment's reserved powers."
"The scenario illustrates the fundamental tension in American federalism between national supremacy and state sovereignty: the Constitution both grants the federal government supreme authority and reserves powers to the states, but does not perfectly delineate where each sphere ends. This tension is ongoing because the boundary between enumerated federal powers and reserved state powers has never been definitively fixed — courts, Congress, and presidents continuously renegotiate it. The Texas abortion law is a direct manifestation: Texas used the state police power to regulate conduct the federal government claimed was constitutionally protected, forcing the courts to adjudicate which level of government has authority over this specific policy area."
| Year | % Trusting Federal Gov't "most of the time" |
% Trusting State Gov't "most of the time" |
% Preferring More State Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | 53% | 62% | 38% |
| 1984 | 44% | 67% | 56% |
| 1996 | 29% | 64% | 59% |
| 2008 | 30% | 58% | 54% |
| 2020 | 20% | 57% | 62% |
"Public trust in the federal government declined substantially from 1972 to 2020, falling from 53% to 20% — a drop of 33 percentage points over the five decades shown."
"There is an inverse relationship between trust in the federal government and preference for state power: as federal trust declined from 53% (1972) to 20% (2020), the percentage preferring more state power increased from 38% to 62%, suggesting that declining confidence in federal institutions correlates with stronger support for returning power to states."
"The data suggest that Americans consistently prefer state governments over the federal government as a locus of trust and power, and this preference has strengthened over time. Trust in state government has remained consistently higher than federal trust across all five years measured (e.g., 57% vs. 20% in 2020), while majorities in four of five years preferred giving more power to states — indicating durable public support for the decentralizing dimension of American federalism."
"One limitation is that public opinion measures current sentiment, not constitutional or practical effectiveness — trust may rise or fall for reasons unrelated to which level of government actually produces better policy outcomes (e.g., partisan polarization may decrease trust in the federal government regardless of its actual performance). This matters because constitutional allocation of powers under federalism is a legal and structural question that should not be determined solely by popular sentiment at any given moment, as Federalist No. 51 argues that structural safeguards are needed precisely because popular majorities can be wrong."
In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Supreme Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, a federal law that made it a crime to possess a firearm near a school. The federal government had justified the law under the Commerce Clause, arguing that gun violence in schools substantially affected interstate commerce by reducing economic productivity and increasing insurance costs. Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, held that the Act exceeded Congress's commerce power because gun possession near schools was not an economic activity with a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To allow such a broad interpretation, Rehnquist argued, would give Congress a general police power the Constitution reserves to the states under the 10th Amendment, rendering the concept of enumerated powers meaningless.
"The Commerce Clause (Article I, §8) — which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce — was the constitutional clause at issue. The Court held that the Commerce Clause does not give Congress unlimited authority to regulate any activity with even a tangential connection to commerce; rather, Congress may only regulate channels of interstate commerce, the instrumentalities of commerce, or activities that substantially affect interstate commerce — and non-economic activity near schools did not meet that standard."
"The Lopez ruling reflects the federalism principle embedded in the Constitution's structure and reinforced by the 10th Amendment — that the federal government has limited, enumerated powers, and everything else belongs to the states. Rehnquist's majority opinion explicitly invoked this: allowing the Commerce Clause to extend to any activity indirectly affecting the economy would give Congress a general police power that the Constitution's framers deliberately reserved to states. This directly echoes Brutus No. 1's warning that broad clauses like Necessary and Proper would eventually allow the federal government to absorb all state functions."
"While Lopez limited federal power by enforcing a boundary on the Commerce Clause, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) broadly expanded implied federal power. In McCulloch, Chief Justice Marshall held that the Necessary and Proper Clause gave Congress the authority to charter a national bank — even though the Constitution doesn't explicitly grant that power — because it was an appropriate means to carry out enumerated powers (taxing, borrowing, regulating commerce). The two cases represent opposing moments in the Court's federalism jurisprudence: McCulloch says federal power can expand through implied powers; Lopez says Commerce Clause power has real outer limits that protect state police powers."
"The author of Brutus No. 1 argued that the Necessary and Proper and Supremacy Clauses would give the federal government unlimited power that would eventually destroy state authority. A Brutus author could point to the history before Lopez — decades of Commerce Clause expansion culminating in Congress trying to regulate gun possession near schools — as proof that their prediction was correct: broad constitutional clauses were used to extend federal power far beyond anything the founding generation explicitly authorized. Lopez could then be cited as a belated judicial correction that proves the Anti-Federalists were right to demand clearer limits, though they might argue the Court took nearly two centuries too long to enforce them."
Thesis (1 pt): "The U.S. Constitution's separation of powers and checks and balances do effectively protect individual liberty from governmental tyranny — not because they rely on virtuous officeholders, but because they harness self-interest as a structural force that prevents any single branch or faction from accumulating unchecked power."
Evidence 1 — Foundational Document (1 pt): "The most direct articulation of this mechanism appears in Federalist No. 51, in which James Madison argues that 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition.' Madison's insight is that constitutional structure — not moral character — is what prevents tyranny: by giving each branch both the means and the incentive to resist encroachments by the others, the Constitution creates a self-reinforcing equilibrium. The legislative branch's control over funding limits executive overreach; the executive veto checks legislative overreach; judicial review keeps both branches within constitutional limits. Madison explicitly designed this system to work even when officeholders are self-interested rather than virtuous — making it more durable than any system that depends on the goodness of those in power."
Evidence 2 — Required Court Case (1 pt): "The Supreme Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803) demonstrated that this structural protection is not merely theoretical. When President Adams attempted to appoint 'midnight judges' and the Jefferson administration refused to deliver their commissions, Chief Justice Marshall used the case to establish judicial review — the power of courts to strike down acts of Congress or the executive that violate the Constitution. This act was itself a textbook exercise of checks and balances: an unelected judiciary using its constitutional authority to limit the elected branches. The fact that Marshall simultaneously established a powerful precedent for the Court while politically ruling against his own party (the Federalists) illustrates exactly how separation of powers creates institutional incentives that transcend partisan loyalty."
Counterargument + Rebuttal (1 pt): "Critics — including the author of Brutus No. 1 — argue that the structural protections are insufficient because the Necessary and Proper Clause and Supremacy Clause give the federal government effectively unlimited power to expand at the expense of both states and individuals. This is a serious concern borne out by history: the federal government's power has grown dramatically since 1789. However, this growth does not disprove the effectiveness of checks and balances — rather, it reflects democratic majorities using constitutional channels to authorize federal action. When expansion has exceeded constitutional bounds, the Court has pushed back (as in United States v. Lopez, 1995). The system's gradual expansion reflects political choices by elected governments, not structural failure of the separation of powers mechanism."
Conclusion: "The Constitution's structural design is imperfect — no system can guarantee perfect protection from all governmental overreach — but its separation of powers and checks and balances have proven remarkably effective at preventing the kind of consolidated tyranny Madison and Hamilton feared most. By institutionalizing competition between branches and between levels of government, the Constitution transforms self-interest into a protective mechanism for individual liberty."