US Constitution Trivia
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This US Constitution trivia quiz has 115 free questions with answers and covers the whole story of America's founding document: the secret summer in Philadelphia, the compromises that produced the House and Senate, the nine-state ratification fight, and every amendment from the Bill of Rights to the congressional-pay amendment that waited 202 years. You will meet the calligrapher who inked the parchment, the delegates who refused to sign, the student whose C-grade paper changed the Constitution, and the mother whose letter won women the vote. It is written for Constitution Day classrooms, civics students, pub quiz hosts and anyone who wants to test how much they actually remember from government class. About a third of the questions are easy, a third medium, and the rest hard to expert, so it works for a mixed room. Every answer has been checked against the text of the Constitution or a primary encyclopaedic account of the debates and ratifications, so you can quote them with confidence.
30 of 115 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which building did the delegates meet to draft the Constitution in the summer of 1787?
Independence Hall, Philadelphia
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, was then the Pennsylvania State House, and the delegates met there in secret, with no reporters or visitors allowed.
Q 02Which delegate who refused to sign lent his name to rigged maps?
Elbridge Gerry
Elbridge Gerry: an 1812 Boston Gazette cartoon turned a district drawn under his administration into a salamander, the 'Gerry-mander', and in 1813 he became vice president.
Q 03The Constitution forbids the federal government from granting what?
Titles of nobility
Titles of nobility: in 1810 Congress even sent the states an amendment stripping citizenship from anyone who accepted a foreign title, but it was never ratified.
Q 04What collective name is given to the first ten amendments?
The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights grew from a bargain: Massachusetts ratified only after Federalists agreed to recommend amendments protecting individual rights.
Q 05The Constitution superseded which earlier framework of national government on March 4, 1789?
The Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation let Congress only request money, and the states regularly failed or refused to pay what they were asked.
Q 06Which three words open the Preamble to the Constitution?
We the People
We the People opens a Preamble that grants no powers: in 1905 the Supreme Court said no substantive federal power had ever been drawn from it.
Q 07Which Pennsylvania delegate is credited with mainly writing the Preamble?
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris led the Committee of Style's final draft, which dropped earlier wording that listed the separate states.
Q 08Which future president missed the 1787 convention while serving as minister to France?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson followed the convention from Paris and wrote to John Adams that it was 'really an assembly of demigods'.
Q 09Which of the thirteen states refused to send any delegates to the convention?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island stayed away because its leaders, wedded to paper money, distrusted a distant, stronger national government.
Q 10What did the Constitution require before it could take effect?
Nine states ratifying
Nine states ratifying: that replaced the old rule that every state must agree to any change, which had let a single state block it.
Q 11Which state was the first to ratify the Constitution, by a unanimous 30-0 vote?
Delaware
Its licence plates still carry the boast "The First State".
Q 12Which state's ratification on June 21, 1788, made the Constitution operative?
New Hampshire
New Hampshire's vote made it operative, so Virginia and New York, ratifying within weeks, joined a government already approved.
Q 13In a 1789 letter about the new Constitution, which two things did Benjamin Franklin call the only certainties?
Death and taxes
Death and taxes: Franklin hoped the Constitution would last, but the line wasn't his invention; a 1716 English play had already used it.
Q 21The Three-Fifths Compromise let states count three-fifths of those enslaved for what purpose?
Representation in Congress
Representation in Congress: counting the enslaved, who could not vote, gave slave states extra seats and, through them, extra electoral votes.
Q 22What is the popular nickname of the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause?
The Elastic Clause
The Elastic Clause: in 1819 the Supreme Court used it to let Congress charter a national bank, a power the Constitution never lists.
Q 23Which article of the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary?
The third
Q 14Which Supreme Court ruling declared segregated public schools unconstitutional?
Brown v. Board
Brown v. Board: the unanimous 1954 court called separate schools 'inherently unequal', overturning the 'separate but equal' rule it had upheld since 1896.
Q 15Which Virginia delegate refused to sign the Constitution without a written list of rights?
George Mason
George Mason: his 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights later became a model for the amendments ratified in 1791.
Q 16Franklin mused about a rising or setting sun painted on what object in the convention hall?
The president's chair
The president's chair: as the delegates signed, Franklin said he at last knew its painted sun was rising, not setting.
Q 17Whose detailed notes of the secret convention debates were published only after his death in 1836?
James Madison
James Madison: the convention secretary's official records were so brief that Madison's private notes became the best record of the debates.
Q 18Under what shared pen name did the authors of the Federalist Papers write?
Publius
Publius: the pen name hid the authors' identities while honouring Publius Valerius, an ancient Roman general.
Q 19Which proposal kept a one-chamber Congress in which every state had a single vote?
The New Jersey Plan
The New Jersey Plan: delegates rejected it on June 19 by seven states to three, and kept the rival Virginia Plan as the basis for debate.
Q 20Which 1215 English document's 'law of the land' promise inspired the Constitution's guarantee of due process?
Magna Carta
Magna Carta: King John sealed it to avert civil war with rebel barons, promising that no free man would be imprisoned except by the law of the land.
The third: it creates only the Supreme Court and leaves every lower federal court for Congress to set up, which it first did in 1789.
Q 24Which amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures?
The Fourth
The Fourth: it answered writs of assistance, British general warrants that let tax collectors search colonists' property for untaxed goods.
Q 25Who presides over the Senate when a President is tried on impeachment charges?
The Chief Justice
The Chief Justice: John Roberts presided over Donald Trump's first trial in 2020, but Senator Patrick Leahy presided in 2021, once Trump had left office.
Q 26Which body holds the sole power of impeachment?
The House
The House impeaches, then appoints "managers" to prosecute the case at the Senate trial.
Q 27How long do federal judges hold their offices under the Constitution?
During good behaviour
During good behaviour: in practice that means life tenure, which lets judges rule without fear of losing their jobs.
Q 28Which crime does the Constitution say needs two witnesses to the same overt act to convict?
Treason
Treason: the framers set a high bar because factions had long used invented treason charges as weapons against their rivals.
Q 29When a president lets a bill die unsigned after Congress adjourns, what is that called?
A pocket veto
A pocket veto: unlike a regular veto, Congress can't override it, because there is no returned bill to vote on again.
Q 30The 1933 repeal of Prohibition was approved by which method, used only that one time?
State ratifying conventions
State ratifying conventions: repeal backers believed the temperance lobby still held sway over elected politicians, so they went around them.