Download Glossary of Legal and Educational Terms: A Comprehensive Overview and more Quizzes Local Government Studies in PDF only on Docsity!
A Nation at Risk
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform is the 1983 report of American President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education. TERM 2
Alternative dispute resolution
DEFINITION 2 Alternative dispute resolution includes dispute resolution processes and techniques that act as a means for disagreeing parties to come to an agreement short of litigation. TERM 3
Activist judges
DEFINITION 3 Judicial activism refers to judicial rulings suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing law. TERM 4
Appeal
DEFINITION 4 In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. TERM 5
Bureaucracy
DEFINITION 5 A bureaucracy is "a body of non-elective government officials" and/or "an administrative policy-making group".
Charter schools
A charter school is a U.S. and Canadian term for a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established public school system in which it is located. TERM 7
Citizen legislatures
DEFINITION 7 In the United States, a citizen legislature is one made up primarily of citizens who have a full-time occupation besides being a legislator. TERM 8
City charter
DEFINITION 8 A city charter or town charter is a legal document (charter) establishing a municipality such as a city or town. TERM 9
Civil cases
DEFINITION 9 Civil law is a branch of the law. In common law countries such as England, Wales, and the United States, the term refers to non-criminal law. TERM 10
Commander in chief
DEFINITION 10 A commander-in-chief is the person or body that exercises supreme operational command and control of a nation's military forces or significant elements of those forces.
districts
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by local government. TERM 17
Drug courts
DEFINITION 17 Drug courts are judicially supervised court dockets that handle cases of non-violent substance-abusing offenders under the adult, juvenile, family and tribal justice systems. TERM 18
filibusters
DEFINITION 18 A filibuster is a parliamentary procedure where debate over a proposed piece of legislation is extended, allowing one or more members to delay or entirely prevent a vote on the proposal. TERM 19
Formal powers
DEFINITION 19 In mathematics, a formal power series is a generalization of a polynomial, where the number of terms is allowed to be infinite; this implies giving up the possibility of replacing the variable in the polynomial with an arbitrary number. TERM 20
Governor
DEFINITION 20 A governor is, in most cases, a public official with the power to govern the executive branch of a non-sovereign or sub- national level of government, ranking under the head of state.
Home rule
Home rule is the power of a constituent part of a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been decentralized to it by the central government. TERM 22
Home schooling
DEFINITION 22 Homeschooling, also known as home education, is the education of children inside the home, as opposed to in the formal settings of a public or private school. TERM 23
Impeachment
DEFINITION 23 Impeachment is a process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as criminal or civil punishment. TERM 24
implementation
DEFINITION 24 Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy. TERM 25
Intermediate appellate court
DEFINITION 25 An intermediate appellate court is an appeals court that is not the court of last resort in its jurisdiction.
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was a U.S. Act of Congress which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. TERM 32
Off-year elections
DEFINITION 32 Off-year elections refer to general elections in the United States that are held in odd-numbered years. TERM 33
oversight
DEFINITION 33 The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is a United States House of Representatives committee that has existed in varying forms since 1816. TERM 34
Pardons
DEFINITION 34 Pardon is the postponement of punishment, often with a view to a pardon or other review of the sentence. TERM 35
Party chief
DEFINITION 35 In politics, a Party leader is the most powerful official within a political party. He/She speaks to his/her political party and represents them.
Patronage
A list of Patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary by occupations and activities, dioceses, and other places: TERM 37
Pendleton Act
DEFINITION 37 The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (ch. 27, 22 Stat. 403) is a United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation. TERM 38
Plea bargain
DEFINITION 38 A plea bargain is any agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor. TERM 39
precedent
DEFINITION 39 The precedence effect or law of the first wavefront is a binaural psychoacoustic effect. When a sound is followed by another sound separated by a sufficiently short time delay (below the listener's echo threshold), listeners perceive a single fused auditory image; its perceived spatial location is dominated by the location of the first-arriving sound (the first wave front). TERM 40
problem solving courts
DEFINITION 40 Problem-solving courts address the underlying problems that contribute to criminal behavior and are a current trend in the legal system of the United States.
School vouchers
A school voucher, also called an education voucher, in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for a student at a school chosen by the student or the student's parents. TERM 47
Special districts
DEFINITION 47 Special-purpose districts or special district governments in the United States are independent governmental units that exist separately from, and with substantial administrative and fiscal independence from, general purpose local governments such as county, municipal, and township governments. TERM 48
Spoils system
DEFINITION 48 In the politics of the United States, a spoils system is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends and relatives as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party- as opposed to a merit system, where offices are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity. TERM 49
State supreme
court
DEFINITION 49 This article discusses the state supreme courts in the United States. See Australian court hierarchy for the counterparts in Australian states. TERM 50
Strong mayor
DEFINITION 50 The mayor-council government system is one of the two most common forms of local government in the United States.
Supermajority
A supermajority, or a qualified majority, is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of one half used for majority. TERM 52
three-strikes laws
DEFINITION 52 In the United States, habitual offender laws are statutes enacted by state governments which mandate courts to impose harsher sentences on those convicted of an offense if they have been previously convicted of two prior serious criminal offenses. TERM 53
Trial court
DEFINITION 53 A trial court is a court in which trials take place. Such courts, known also as courts of first instance, are said to have original jurisdiction. TERM 54
Verdict
DEFINITION 54 In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. TERM 55
Veto
DEFINITION 55 A veto - Latin for "I forbid" - is the power to unilaterally stop an official action, especially the enactment of legislation.
