Hi and welcome back to Mr. Raymond s Social Studies Academy and wow, it s been a while since I made a new civics video but for those who take the Civics eoc the state changed the test on us. Regardless today we will be looking at the first two benchmarks of the 2024 eoc exam Topics 1.1 & 1.2 Influences on America s Constitutional Republic. Now in this class are going to be introduced to many new vocabulary words. Do you actually know what a republic is? Most of you have spoken the words and to the republic for which it stands day after day but I find many of my students don t know what a republic is and if you don t either, don t feel bad! Many adults would have a hard time describing what a republic is and that is the beauty of this class. Your vocabulary and your knowledge is going to expand greatly! So let s Let s jump right in with our first benchmark, which tells us that you will need to be able to analyze the influences of ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Judeo-Christian tradition on America s constitutional republic So let s break those down one by one. And we will go all the way back to around 600 bc to Ancient Athens, known as the birthplace of democracy. In Greek, demos means the people, and kratia means power so the word democracy translates to people power. Now one of the influences from Ancient Greece they want us to focus on is the concept of civic participation. We ll come back to this phrase later in this course but for now, think of civic participation as the people being involved in the political process by granting the common man the right to vote and yes, women were sadly left out Another thing we ll come back to but by allowing their citizens the right to vote, which spread to other city-states, Ancient Greece was creating this concept of civic participation. Ancient Greece also gave us the concept of citizenship the Greek word polis where we get the word politics from has evolved but came to mean a body of citizens under a city s legal jurisdiction . The ancient Romans developed the word civitas to mean citizen, as well as a number of ideals from Ancient Greece. Ok, so for the next part of our benchmark, we have to be able to compare and contrast these ancient political ideals to the U.S. Government So, let s start with the ancient Greek influence of civic participation. In the U.S. political culture citizens are highly encouraged to vote, to join interest groups or political parties How else did the Ancient Greeks influence America s constitutional republic? We talked about how they established a legislative or lawmaking process open to regular citizens and remember, whenever you hear legislation think laws Greece also set the stage for republicanism, - And there is that key term we discussed at the begging so let s get our definition a Republic is a state in which power is (ideally) held by the people and their elected representatives. I say ideally because there are states like the People's Republic of North Korea which obviously isn t a democratic republic . But by having elected representatives run the government and that concept was enhanced in the Roman Republic And there is that key term we discussed at the begging so let s get our definition a Republic is a state in which power is (ideally) held by the people and their elected representatives. I say ideally because there are states like the People's Republic of North Korea which obviously isn t a democratic republic. ancient Greece laid the groundwork for republicanism. Now remember that for each one of these ideals, you want them to connect back to the U.S. Government so what better connection to make with Republicanism than the U.S. Congress? If elected representatives rule a republic Congress has the House of Representatives. But we see republicanism at state legislatures, city councils and this is what makes America a republic. Now, remember in the U.S., it is the Constitution that makes our republic work and once again we can look back to the ancient Greeks who developed constitutions for their city-states And for now, again, think of a constitution as a plan for government but we will get so in-depth with the U.S. Constitution that you guys will know it inside and out. Ok, so we ve spent all this time comparing so let s contrast while Athens did lay the groundwork for a republic they were more of what s called a direct democracy that allows people to vote themselves on laws and policies. Some state governments do this, which again we ll talk about later but not the U.S. Government. We elect people to serve in the U.S. Congress, and they vote on the laws themselves So let s look at Ancient Roman influences and for those, we want to really look at the period before they became an empire and were the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic had a Senate hey, we have a Senate that was a representative governing body Now we can contrast that one right away because the representatives to Rome s senate were what s known as oligarchs or really by the wealthy and it was wealthy families that dominated Rome s Senate Now we sometimes criticize our politicians for looking out for the wealthy special interests, and many politicians at the national level usually have a lot of money But certainly not all, our representatives come from a wide diverse background and that would never have happened in Ancient Rome s Senate. Another contrast with the Roman Republic is that they didn t have a president they had two counsels with executive, legislative, and judicial power But they needed the support of the Senate. And here we get another concept that we will spend much time on Separation of Powers By making different branches of government share power, there is less chance that power will be abused. And, hey, look, we took it a step further and divided governmental power into three branches and again, the goal of this is to avoid tyranny. This is another word you will see a lot this year, so let s take a closer look. Tyranny is cruel and abusive government rule, and a tyrant is a ruler who commits those abusive acts. The other key term you need to know is oppression basically the same thing but often more in the context of having rights denied All right, we are cranking along stay with it you re doing great so in our next benchmark, explain how the Judeo-Christian ethical ideas of justice, individual worth, personal responsibility, and the rule of law influenced America s constitutional republic. Now we had a similar benchmark in the past, but this has been moved up to the front of the standards so the state definitely wants you to be familiar with this stuff at the same time, the test is new so we haven t seen many practice questions for this benchamark but we push forward Regarding Judeo-ethical ideas about justice, we can turn to what s referred to as Israelite Law a code of laws established in the Roman province of Judea near present-day Jerusalem. They established a legislative and judicial system in an attempt to lower crime and promote moral behavior, and I think moral is a word you want to keep an eye out for The 10 Commandments and Old Testament laid the foundation for this Judeo-legal system. For the Christian aspect, we have the Justinian Code. Right before the fall of the Roman Empire Christianity had begun to spread. When the Roman Empire fell, the ruler of the new Eastern Holy Roman Empire located in Constantinople which was named after the first Catholic Roman Emperor... the Justinian Code was based on hundreds of years of Roman laws and precedents and the code became part of the Church law known as canon law there s a sculpture of Justinian that hangs in the U.S. capital today. So what are our takeaways from Judeo-Christian influence? They certainly can influence our concept known as the rule of law which we ll define in a minute and system of laws that promote moral behavior. And now I know you are getting tired, but we are just going to end by reviewing some key terms that are really going to help in your following lessons and I m going to go through them pretty fast because you will be defining them again but hit pause if you need the definition now: Let s start by just defining what your test is talking about when they mention founding documents we are talking about the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights First is due process. This phrase is going to come up in several lessons. What is it? Well, for now, we ll define it as Fair treatment of the citizens by the government with them Following all legal protections that citizens are entitled to, aka your rights. Equality of mankind this is a new concept but it is a topic we will examine closely with the 14th Amendment s Equal Protection Law, the Declaration of Independence s statement that all men are created equal. Limited government is just what it sounds like our rulers should not have unlimited powers. Constitutions. Laws. Precedents should guide their actions. Natural Rights are ones that every human should be entitled to without the need for a government to spell it out or as Thomas Jefferson said, life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. The rule of law is the concept that All citizens must obey the same laws, including lawmakers and governmental leaders! And the final question posed for us in this benchmark is, why is religious liberty a right? And you probably already know the answer to this There were a good number of Europeans during the colonial era who escaped Europe for religious persecution. In those days, most of Europe was ruled by absolute monarchs who chose the religion of its citizens. And the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights put Freedom of Religion as the first amendment stating that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof And that s it for our first two new benchmarks Up next, we ll be looking at additional influences on the Founding Fathers so be sure to subscribe and teachers, just a reminder that this PowerPoint with a wide variety of additional resources are available at Teachers Pay Teachers Mr. Raymond s Social Studies Academy just click the link below this video or search for Mr. Raymond s Social Studies Academy @ Teachers Pay Teachers