Revision & Exam Practice for the “legacy” A Level qualifications including:

• Edexcel (Unit 3C – Representative Processes in the USA, Unit 4C – Governing the USA)
• AQA (Unit 3A – The Politics of the USA, Unit 4A – The Government of the USA)
• OCR (F855 – US Government & Politics)

How to use these questions for revision and exam practice:

REVISE THE US CONSTITUTION

1. For short-answer questions, write a 3 paragraph response using the PEEACH paragraph structure (P=point, E=evidence, E=explain, A=argument, C=counter argument, H=how does this answer the question?)
2. Once you have completed your question, read the indicative content and the mark scheme.
3. Complete the “Make It Better” (MIB) Task:
   1. Highlight the parts of the indicative content your were able to fully explain and exemplify in green.
   2. Highlight the parts of the indicative content you partially explained and/or exemplified in yellow.
   3. Highlight the parts of the indicative content which you did not include in red.
4. Using the mark scheme, award yourself a level and a mark – compare this to your target grade – are you on track to achieve this in the examination?
5. There is also a space for you to add additional notes and/or examples that don’t appear in the indicative content, or add better explanations, or include additional, points from the indicative content.

How difficult is it to amend the constitution? (15)

Indicative Content

There are two stages to the formal procedure of amending the constitution: amendments can be proposed either by a 2/3 majority vote in both houses of Congress or by a constitutional convention applied for by 2/3 of the state legislatures; once proposed, they then need to be ratified, either by ¾ of the state legislatures or by ¾ of specially convened state constitutional conventions.

The requirement at both stages for a ‘super-majority’ has meant that only 27 have ever been approved, out of thousands that have been put forward.

However, the constitution can be effectively amended by other means, either through Supreme Court decisions, such as Roe v Wade, or administrative practice, such as the shift of power from the states to the federal government that has occurred since 1787.