The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against approximately 1.5 million women Walmart employees who alleged that the company discriminated against women in pay and promotions. The decision prevented the lawsuit from proceeding as a nationwide class action lawsuit. The Court based its decision on the “commonality” requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(2), which governs class action lawsuits. Commonality means that members of a class must share a common question of law or fact. However, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion interpreted this requirement more strictly than previous courts had. He argued that it was not enough for the plaintiffs to claim they all experienced discrimination; instead, they had to show that their claims depended on a common answer capable of resolving everyone’s claims at once. The Court found that the plaintiffs failed to meet this requirement because the alleged discrimination did not stem from a single company-wide policy. Instead, Walmart allowed thousands of local managers to exercise discretion over pay and promotion decisions. According to the majority, different managers made different decisions for different reasons, so there was no single cause, or, as Scalia described it, no “glue” that held all of the women’s claims together. As a result, the Court concluded that the women could not proceed as one nationwide class.

1. The court system is better suited to protect individuals than the elected branches of government because judges are independent from voters. Federal judges have life tenure, which allows them to make decisions based on the Constitution and the law rather than public opinion or political pressure. In contrast, elected officials depend on votes to stay in office, so they may be more likely to support policies favored by the majority, even if those policies harm individuals or minority groups. Courts also focus on resolving individual legal disputes, giving people a way to challenge government actions they believe violate their rights. This allows even those with little political influence to seek protection under the law. A good example is Brown v. Board of Education. At the time, racial segregation in public schools remained popular in many states, and elected officials had little political incentive to end it. The Supreme Court, insulated from electoral pressure, ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision protected the rights of Black students even though many elected leaders were unwilling to act, demonstrating how courts can safeguard individual rights when the political process fails to do so.

2. The Federal Court system is somewhat anti-democratic because its justices are appointed rather than elected, and they can overturn laws passed by elected officials. However, this design was intentional and strategic. The framers wanted judges to be independent from popular pressure so they could protect the Constitution and individual rights, even when those decisions were unpopular with the majority. As Federalist #10 argues, James Madison was especially concerned with protecting the property rights of the owning class from working-class majorities that might use their voting power to redistribute wealth. Since many of the framers were themselves landowners and merchants, an unelected judiciary served their interests by creating a branch of government insulated from the demands of those without property.

1. The Establishment Clause is the part of the 1st Amendment that stops the government from creating an official state religion or favoring one religion over an other, keeping the government religiously neutral. Since the clause doesn’t clearly define what counts as “establishing” religion, the Supreme Court created the Lemon Test in the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman to help decide whether a law violates this clause. The Lemon Test examines 3 questions: whether the law has a secular purpose, whether it avoids advancing or inhibiting religion, and whether it avoids creating excessive entanglement between government and religion. If a law fails any one of these three parts, it’s considered unconstitutional, and this test gives courts a consistent way to evaluate cases involving religion and the public, such as school prayer or public funding for religious schools.

2. Yes, burning the U.S. flag is protected by the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that flag burning is a form of symbolic speech in the 1989 case of Texas v. Johnson. Burning the flag is an seen as an expressive act used to convey a political message rather than just an action with no communicative purpose and because the 1st Amendment protects free speech, including symbolic forms of expression, not just spoken or written words, the Court held that the government cannot criminalize flag burning simply because it finds the message offensive or disagrees with it.

3. I actually learned about this from the Dave Chappelle show. Does anyone else remember that lol? taking the Fifth means they’re invoking their right under the 5th Amendment to remain silent, which protects people from incriminating themselves. This right is meant to protect people from being pressured into confessing or providing self-incriminating testimony, ensuring that the burden of proving guilt remains on the government rather than relying on forced statements from the accused.

1. The War on Terror is a new kind of war because it’s not really being fought against one country, army, or government, it’s a war against “terror” itself, which isn’t tied to a specific place or enemy. P. Williams explains this by saying “a war against terrorism is a war of the mind, so broadly defined that the enemy becomes anybody who makes us afraid.” That’s a big difference from traditional wars, where you’re fighting an actual government and military, and you defeat their army and they surrender. Since the enemy isn’t tied to a nation army, anyone deemed an terroist can be seen as a suspect and this kind of war doesn’t really have an end point.

2. Roving wiretaps seem to violate the 4th Amendment because they allow one warrant to cover multiple devices instead of requiring a separate, specific warrant for each one. Normally, the 4th Amendment requires the government to clearly identify the exact device being searched before they can tap it, but roving wiretaps remove that requirement, allowing surveillance to follow a person across multiple devices instead of being tied to one specific, identified device.

3. Sneak and peek warrants also seem to violate the 4th Amendment because they allow the government’s federal agents to search a home or business in secret. The Fourth Amendment is built around the idea of notice and accountability during a search, the person being searched is supposed to know it’s happening, partly to make sure the search stays within legal limits (like preventing police from planting evidence or searching beyond what the warrant allows). Sneak and peek warrants violates that.

1. Faction is a group of people united by the same economic interest. Based on everything we covered in the course, faction reminds me of the social class conflict, specifically the relationship between the owning class and the working class. The owning class, the people who own the means of production and live off of M-C-M’, have one set of interests. The working class, the people who sell their labor power just to survive and never see the surplus value they create, have the complete opposite interests.

2. According to James Madison in Federalist #10 the source of wealth and private property comes down to faculties, meaning the natural abilities and talents people are born with. He is saying that because people are born with different abilities some naturally end up owning more property than others and that explains why some people are wealthy and others are poor. This mindset shows how the authors of the Constitution thought about class differences. To them inequality between the owning class and the working class is not a product of their exploitation or the systems they created, but about one’s intelligence, genetics and race.

3. I completely disagree with this explanation of wealth and poverty. We now know that wealth comes from extracting surplus value from workers, not from being naturally more gifted. The working class is not poor because they lack talent, they are poor because the owning class keeps the extra value that workers create but never get paid for. James Madison’s explanation of faculties is essentially political rhetoric that makes the gap between the owning class and the working class look natural and inevitable instead of something that is manufactured and maintained through exploitation.

4. According to Federalist #10 the first object of government is to protect the unequal faculties of acquiring property, meaning the number one job of the government is to protect the owning class and their wealth. This is completely different from what we are taught today. It’s my belief that most white Americans grow up believing the government exists to serve them equally and act as a neutral referee, but not Black people. I believe Black people have always felt left out of the government’s protection and history proves that from slavery to Jim Crow to present day. But when you connect it back to everything we learned about social class it is not surprising at all. The people who wrote the Constitution were the owning class and they designed a government that would protect their ability to keep extracting surplus value from the working class. So it makes sense that the government was never meant to work for everyone, that is just the rhetoric. The first object was always protecting wealth and property and honestly it is evident that has not changed. Billionaires get tax cuts and bailouts while working class Americans drowning in debt get foreclosed homes and repossessed cars.

5. I am not surprised at all that Federalist #10 is not in favor of democracy, and supports a Republican form of government. Once you understand everything we have learned this semester it all connects. From the political rhetoric used to disguise class conflict and racism, to the relationship between the owning class and the working class, and present day wealth inequality, it all tells the same story. America was built on extracting the labor of others for cheap or free and the entire government system was designed to keep that going. A pure democracy would never work for the owning class because that would mean the working class majority actually gets an equal say. And if the working class majority had real power they would vote to cancel debts, redistribute wealth and create a fair playing field. That would completely dismantle the M-C-M’ cycle that keeps the owning class wealthy. So of course Federalist #10 was against pure democracy. Democracy meant the people they were exploiting could outvote them and take back what was taken from them. The republic they designed was never about fairness. It was about maintaining the appearance of fairness while making sure the owning class stayed in control. So to end, James Madison was in favor of a republic because he was a member of the owning class and it was in his best interest to protect his wealth, not look out for the poor, whom he conveniently blamed on their own faculties.

1. The Constitution was written by and for the white wealthy class, which included merchants, big landowners, creditors, slaveholders and bankers. According to Michael Parenti, by 1760 fewer than five hundred white men in five colonial cities controlled most of the commerce, shipping, banking and manufacturing on the eastern seaboard. These men were not just wealthy, they were personally invested in the outcome because many of them held government securities and land that would directly increase in value under the new government. Charles Beard backs this up by pointing out that the delegates had a direct financial stake in how the Constitution turned out, meaning the whole document was shaped by people who stood to personally benefit from it. The people excluded were slaves, women, indentured servants, Native Americans and white men who did not own enough property. Parenti notes this was the overwhelming majority of the population, not a small group. The fundamental difference between the two classes came down to property and wealth. One class owned it and used that ownership to write the rules in their favor, and the other class had none and because of that had no legal standing to participate at all.

2. I strongly believe the social class structure of early United States society is the same as ours today. Then and now you have two classes, the owning class and the working class. In 1787 the owning class were the merchants, landowners, bankers and creditors who controlled the wealth and wrote the rules in their favor. Today that same dynamic exists except instead of landowners and slaveholders you have corporations, billionaires and major investors who still control the wealth and still shape policy to protect their interests. The working class then were the farmers, debtors, indentured servants and laborers who had no property and no political power. Today working class people still sell their labor to survive and still have little to no net assets. The legal barriers like property requirements to vote are gone but the economic ones are still very much in place. Wealth still determines who has real political power and who the government actually works for. The names and faces changed but the class structure itself never did.

2. They were afraid of democracy because democracy meant the majority got to decide things and the majority were poor farmers, debtors and working people who wanted debt relief, fairer taxes and land redistribution. That was a direct threat to everything the framers owned. Shays Rebellion scared them so badly because it showed what organized poor people were capable of. Madison basically admitted this in Federalist No. 10 when he said the whole point was to prevent the propertyless majority from acting together against the propertied class. So the checks and balances, the electoral college, the Senate, all of it was not designed to protect democracy, it was designed to slow it down and keep wealth safe from the people who did not have any.

3. The people who wrote the Constitution were afraid of democracy because they were the owning class and democracy would give power to the working class. The owning class had everything to lose if the majority actually got to make the decisions. The majority were poor farmers, debtors and laborers who had no property and no wealth, and what they wanted was debt relief, fairer taxes and a redistribution of land. That directly threatened the wealth and position of the owning class. Michael Parenti makes this clear when he points to Shays Rebellion as the event that confirmed every fear the framers had. When the working class organized and took up arms it showed the owning class exactly what democracy from below actually looked like in practice. Charles Beard adds that the delegates were not neutral statesmen, they were members of the owning class who had a direct financial stake in keeping that class protected. When James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that the majority must not be allowed to act together against the propertied class, he was speaking directly as a member of the owning class trying to protect it from the working class below. Democracy meant the working class could outvote the owning class and take back what was taken from them, and the Constitution was specifically designed to make sure that never happened.

1. The role of citizens is different in each system. In a federal system, citizens vote at both the national and state level, meaning they have a direct say in two levels of government at the same time and each level has independent power. In a unitary system citizens also vote, but most of the power sits at the national level, so even though they may elect local leaders those local governments are dependent on the national government and do not have much independent authority. In a confederation the citizen’s role is the most disconnected from the national government. All the real power sits with the states so meaningful participation is only at the state level. The national government can barely act without going through the states first, so citizen’s have almost no direct relationship with it.

2. The division of power is a way of splitting up who gets to be in charge of what between the state the federal governments. The federal government handles things that affect the whole country like war, foreign policy and interstate commerce. And state governments handle things like education, elections and public safety for their citizens. Then there are concurrent powers that both levels share like taxing and making laws. The point is that no single level of government gets to control everything, which is supposed to prevent any one group from having too much power over people’s lives.

3. The federal government shapes state and local government actions through two mechanisms: financial assistance and policy guidance. In terms of financial influence, federal aid constituted nearly 41 percent of New York State’s total receipts during the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Because the state was dependent on the federal government for nearly half of its budget during the crisis, its policy decisions inevitably aligned with federal priorities. The federal relief funds distributed through the CARES Act were restricted to specific approved purposes, which meant New York did not have full discretion over how the money was allocated. For example, the funds were directed toward specific areas such as payroll for public health and safety employees, hospital capacity, testing and contact tracing, and vaccine distribution. New York could not divert that money toward unrelated state expenses. By controlling what the funding could and could not be spent on, the federal government effectively determined which public health actions the state would prioritize and implement. In terms of policy guidance, when Governor Cuomo lifted COVID-19 restrictions in June 2021, he explicitly tied that decision to CDC recommendations, affirming that unvaccinated individuals remained responsible for wearing masks in accordance with federal CDC guidelines. Furthermore, the FDA authorized the first three COVID-19 vaccines between December 2020 and February 2021, and no state, including New York, could begin distribution until federal approval was granted. New York’s entire vaccination infrastructure was built around the federal government’s authorization timeline. This demonstrates that even decisions made at the state level were directly informed and shaped by federal health directives.

1. M-C-M’ is the cycle that shows how capitalists stay wealthy and keep growing their wealth. M is the money the capitalist starts with. They use that money to buy commodities — C — which includes the means of production like buildings, machines and raw materials, but most importantly labor power. Then at the end they have M’ which is more money than they started with. That extra amount is surplus value and that is where profit comes from. The key thing to understand is that M’ does not come from the capitalist doing any work themselves. It comes from workers. When a capitalist buys a worker’s labor power they are not paying them for everything they produce instead they are paying just enough to cover their basic means of subsistence. But workers produce way more value than what their labor power costs. The first few hours of a shift might cover the cost of their labor power but they keep working and everything produced after that point is surplus labor meaning unpaid work that becomes surplus value for the capitalist.

A good example is a Tesla factory worker. Tesla invests money into factories, equipment and labor power. Workers build the cars but the price Tesla sells them for is far greater than what it cost to produce them including wages. That gap is surplus value extracted directly from the workers’ labor. The cycle then just repeats. The capitalist reinvests the profit, buys more labor power and means of production, and extracts even more surplus value. That is how capitalists do not just stay wealthy but continuously expand their wealth while workers remain dependent on selling their labor power just to survive.

1. Ideology is a socialized lens that people look through and base their decisions on. It is not something we consciously choose. It gets conditioned into us through family, social groups, and culture until it just feels like common sense and truth.

A good example of ideology, to me, is how many Jamaicans grow up believing that America is the land of opportunity. This gets passed down through family stories and culture so deeply that it feels like fact. But when many Jamaican immigrants actually arrive, they face discriminatory hiring practices, housing segregation, and unequal access to credit and loans, ending up working jobs well below their qualifications. However, instead of recognizing those systems as the problem they blame themselves and just push harder, because the ideology is so deeply ingrained that questioning it means questioning everything they were raised to believe.

What I realized studying this is that ideologies tend to serve the people who hold them. Conservatives hold their beliefs because they protect their social hierarchy and interests. Liberals, who are largely Black and Brown people, hold their ideology because it reflects their social reality and lived experience. And none of this is consciously chosen. It gets passed down through family conditioning and social groups until it feels less like a belief system and more like just the way things are.

2. The difference between conservative and liberal ideology in US politics comes down to a few key concepts. Liberals believe that government intervention is necessary and that a bigger government benefits everyone, especially marginalized groups. They do not trust the free market to serve all people equally and believe the wealthy should be taxed more. Above everything, liberals value equality and a fair playing field for all people. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe in small government, where individual states have more power and control. They heavily believe in the free market and individual responsibility, meaning if you are poor, it is your fault. They are deeply patriotic, pro-military, and rooted in traditional religious values. For them, it is all about liberty.

A clear example of this divide is with the topic of abortion rights. Conservatives believe abortion is wrong based on traditional and religious values, while Liberals believe it should be a woman’s choice. And that choice is often not just moral but economic and social. Many women who seek abortions cannot afford to raise a child financially or emotionally, and choosing not to have a child is a way of protecting themselves from further suffering. This is where the class divide becomes clear. Conservatives are generally wealthier, so their ideology is built around protecting their social position and traditional values. Liberals are largely Black, Brown, and working-class people whose ideology is shaped by economic reality and survival. So it makes sense that two groups living completely different lives would look at the same issue and see it in completely different ways.

3. Althusser is saying that ideology exists to protect the people it serves and maintain the status quo. It is not forced on you; it is conditioned into you through school. Once you believe it and fall into the belief system, it is almost impossible to kill because it feels like the truth, not a belief system. Even the idea of choice, like voting or consumerism, is part of it. You think you are choosing, but you really have no choice; the system is designed so nothing changes. The system stays exactly as it was designed to, serving the same people it always has.