Crash Course Government and Politics

Today, Craig is going to take a look at the First Amendment and your right to freedom of religion. We’ll examine some significant Supreme Court decisions and talk about how they’ve affected our interpretations of the law with respect to stuff like animal sacrifice and prayer in schools.

Today, Craig is going to give you an overview of civil rights and civil liberties. Often these terms are used interchangeably, but they are actually very different. Our civil liberties, contained in the Bill of Rights, once only protected us from the federal government, but slowly these liberties have been incorporated to protect us from the states.

As you may have noticed, the Supreme Court recently handed down some pretty big decisions on same-sex marriage (in Obergefell v Hodges) and the Affordable Care Act (in King v. Burwell). Now, it's important to remember that these decisions are not made in a vacuum, but influenced by the other branches of government, political affiliations, and past court decisions.

Today, Craig Benzine is going to tell you about the Supreme Court's most important case, Marbury v. Madison, and how the court granted itself the power of judicial review. Judicial review is the power to examine and invalidate actions of the legislative and executive branches.

This week Craig Benzine talks about what happens when a case makes it to the Supreme Court of the United States (or the SCOTUS). We talk about how to petition to get your case heard, how written arguments, or briefs, are made, what actually happens on the courtroom floor, and of course the variety of ways the SCOTUS issues opinions on cases.

This week is all about the structure of the U.S. court system and how exactly it manages to keep things moving smoothly. We’’ll talk about trial courts, district courts, appeals courts, circuit courts, state supreme courts, and of course the one at the top - the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's pretty easy to forget that the courts, and the laws that come out of them, affect our lives on a daily basis. But how exactly these decisions are made and where each law's jurisdiction starts and ends can get pretty complicated.

We finish our discussion of bureaucracy by looking at methods the other branches of government use to manage this power. From watch-dog organizations to reporting requirements there has been quite a bit of legislation passed aimed at taming the bureaucracy.

This week Craig Benzine breaks down the different types of bureaucracies. Some bureaucracies exist solely to independently regulate industry whereas others are expected to operate like corporations and make a profit. And on top of all that, some of these agencies have sub-agencies! It can all get pretty complicated.

Bureaucracies tend to be associated with unintelligible rules and time-wasting procedures, but they play an important, though controversial, role in governing. From the FDA to the EPA, these agencies were established to help the government manage and carry out laws much more efficiently - to bring the rule making and enforcement closer to the experts.

Filling the role of the executive branch is a pretty big job - much too big for just one person. It's so big that the president employs an entire federal bureaucracy! Today, we’re just going to focus on those closest to the president, like the vice president, the Cabinet, and the Executive Office of the President.

What are all these federal agencies about? Well, the president has a lot of stuff to do as the chief executive, and as much as Americans like to talk about personal responsibility, the president can't really do all this stuff alone. Because it's a huge job! Same deal with Congress. So, they delegate authority. This is where all the government agencies and stuff come from.