How to pass your US citizenship test: Give the wrong answers

Take Question 36. It asks applicants to name two members of the president’s Cabinet. Among the correct answers is “Vice President.” The vice president is a cabinet-level officer but he’s not a Cabinet member. Cabinet members are unelected heads of executive departments, such as the Defense Department, or the State Department.

…Then there is Question 12: What is the “rule of law”?

I showed it to lawyers and law professors. They were stumped.

There are four acceptable answers: “Everyone must follow the law”; “Leaders must obey the law”; “Government must obey the law”; “No one is above the law.”

Judge Richard Posner, the constitutional scholar who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, was unhappy. “These are all incorrect,” he wrote me. “The rule of law means that judges decide cases ‘without respect of persons,’ that is, without considering the social status, attractiveness, etc. of the parties or their lawyers.”

I’m two years away from citizenship eligibility. I was thinking to myself: what a good chance to learn more American history. *sigh*

More here.

6 Responses

  1. If I remain in the UK and if the rules won’t be changed, I will become eligible for British citizenship in 3.5 years. There is a similar test in place here, the “Life in the UK” test. It also contains a few answers where I would just love to be able to not tick a box, but explain my answer.
    The set-up of these tests might be unintentionally geared against academics.

  2. I have an appointment at the local canadian consulate on monday, armed with my own and my mother’s birth certificates. It’s warm and sunny in saskatoon, right?

  3. I think you’ll also enjoy answering the question where you have to list ALL trips of 24 hours or more that you have taken outside the US since becoming a permanent resident…

    Also, gotta love the consistency of the process… They can ask you about the rule of law while making you ineligible because of your political beliefs: believe in Communism? Sorry, we’re stuck in the 50s. You better not join a libertarian organization either, I think it’s also forbidden because it might “advocate or teach opposition to all organized government”…

  5. All right, here’s your last question: What was the cause of the Civil War?

    Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, economic factors, both domestic and international, played a significant…

    Hey, Mate.

    Yeah.

    Just say slavery.

    Slavery it is, sir. Yes, I am a citizen!