GED and HiSET social studies — civics and government

Civics is the largest single share of the social studies test, and it is the part most often studied as a list of definitions — three branches, ten amendments, two chambers. The test does not ask for the list. It puts a situation in front of you and asks which part of the machine it belongs to.

So that is how these twelve are written. A city council refuses a warehouse permit under its zoning code: which level of government made that rule? A man is fired by a private company over a political post and says his First Amendment rights were violated: is he right? A defendant cannot pay for a lawyer and asks the court to appoint one: which amendment gives him that, and why is it not the amendment that protects his silence? A man is held overnight after a traffic stop: what does due process actually promise him, and what does it not?

That last pair is worth a word, because both are places where a plausible answer is wrong. The right to a lawyer during police questioning and the right to a lawyer at trial come from two different amendments, and the item keeps them apart instead of blurring them. Due process is a rule about method, not about outcome: it does not require anyone to be released for claiming innocence, and the confident-sounding "within twenty-four hours" among the options is invented, as such numbers usually are.

The rest covers the machinery: the order in which a bill actually moves, Article V and why two hurdles rather than one make the Constitution hard to rewrite, judicial review shown as a court striking a state law down, the difference between a primary and a general election, how a president is chosen, why the House runs on a two-year clock and the Senate on a six-year one, a duty of citizenship as against a right, and the line between the powers Article I gives Congress and the ones left to the states.

Where the Constitution is quoted, it is quoted exactly, because it can be: works of the United States government carry no copyright. Nothing here is taken from any test publisher's materials.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with GED Testing Service, which owns the GED test, or with the HiSET program, and it is not a test centre.

• Decide whether a given task belongs to federal, state or local government
• Apply a Bill of Rights protection to a real situation — including one where it does not reach, because the actor is private
• Tell the right to counsel at trial apart from the right to silence under questioning
• State what due process requires of the government, and what it does not promise
• Put the steps by which a bill becomes law in order
• Explain what Article V requires and why the second hurdle is the real one
• Recognize judicial review in action, and distinguish a primary from a general election
• Explain what different term lengths are for, and separate an enumerated federal power from one reserved to the states

Constitutional text is quoted verbatim where it is used, since US federal works are in the public domain. From the bank: Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" — and the question asks which power, by contrast, is left to the states. Everything else in the bank is written for this exercise.