American government

By vicenteesqueda
  • Jun 15, 1215

    Magna Carta

    The Magna Carta (“Great Charter”) is a document guaranteeing English political liberties that was drafted at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames, and signed by King John on June 15, 1215, under pressure from his rebellious barons

  • Declaration of Independence

    The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States, was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776,

  • Articles of confederation

    Articles of Confederation, first U.S. constitution (1781–89), which served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continental Congress of the Revolutionary period and the federal government provided under the U.S. Constitution of 1787. Because the experience of overbearing British central authority was vivid in colonial minds, the drafters of the Articles deliberately established a confederation of sovereign states. The Articles were written in 1776–77

  • constitutional convention

    Independence Hall: Assembly Room
    Independence Hall: Assembly Room
    Comstock Images/Thinkstock
    Constitutional Convention, (1787), in U.S. history, convention that drew up the Constitution of the United States. Stimulated by severe economic troubles, which produced radical political movements such as Shays’s Rebellion, and urged on by a demand for a stronger central government, the convention met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia (May 25–September 17, 1787),

  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people.

  • Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

    At a public school in Des Moines, Iowa, students planned to wear black armbands at school as a silent protest against the Vietnam War. When the principal became aware of the plan, he warned the students that they would be suspended if they wore the armbands to school because the protest might cause a disruption in the learning environment. Despite the warning, some students wore the armbands and were suspended. During their suspension, the students' parents sued the school for