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Law & Politics in the News — Set 2: Practice flashcards

6 of 15 questions free to study here · 6 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys

Fifteen sentence-completion questions on the Set 2 words, set in courtrooms, councils, legislatures and world affairs: four choices, one blank, and why the tempting wrong answer fails.

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Practice deck · part of Law & Politics in the News · written against: 150 words of courts, lawmaking, elections and world affairs; US usage; nonpartisan; not legal advice. Updated 2026-10-10.

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  1. The trial judge's ruling stood for a year, until a panel of ______ judges found that she had misread the contract law and sent the case back.

    A) appellate
    B) incumbent
    C) forensic
    D) grassroots
    A) appellate

    Judges who review a lower court's ruling and send the case back are appellate judges. Incumbent is tempting because these judges hold office now, but holding office alone does not let a court hear appeals from a lower one.
    Courts & Trials
  2. No one was threatened and no building was entered: the man simply wheeled an unattended food cart away from the county fair, so he was charged with ______.

    A) trespass
    B) larceny
    C) espionage
    D) libel
    B) larceny

    Taking property without force or a break-in is larceny. Trespass is tempting because he was on the fairgrounds, but trespass is about being where you have no right to be, such as on someone else's land, and his crime was taking the cart.
    Crime & Punishment
  3. Lawmakers paused the hearing for a twenty-minute ______ so the witness could review her notes, then picked up where they had left off.

    A) shutdown
    B) recess
    C) filibuster
    D) gridlock
    B) recess

    A short break before the same hearing resumes is a recess. Shutdown is tempting because work stopped, but a shutdown halts government work when funding lapses, not a pause for a witness.
    Lawmaking
  4. An independent ______, run by retired journalists and funded by small donations, combs through the county's contracts and publishes any sign of waste it finds.

    A) inspector general
    B) whistleblower
    C) watchdog
    D) lobby
    C) watchdog

    An outside group that monitors officials to expose waste is a watchdog. Inspector general is tempting, but an inspector general is an official inside the agency, not a donor-funded group of retired journalists.
    Government & Power
  5. Throughout the strike, the museum's guards ______ outside the main entrance in shifts, urging visitors not to cross their line until the dispute was settled.

    A) canvassed
    B) lobbied
    C) caucused
    D) picketed
    D) picketed

    Strikers protesting outside their own workplace have picketed. Canvassed is tempting because they spoke to the public, but canvassing means contacting people one by one, at their doors or by phone, to seek their votes or ask their views, not protesting during a strike. Lobbying is aimed at lawmakers or officials, not museum visitors.
    Rights & Citizenship
  6. Hoping to settle a quarrel over a shared river, the prime minister named a former foreign minister her personal ______ and dispatched the veteran on a three-week mission next door.

    A) chief of staff
    B) envoy
    C) civil servant
    D) whip
    B) envoy

    A diplomat chosen to carry out one specific task or negotiation for a government is an envoy. Chief of staff is tempting because the former foreign minister acts for her personally, but a chief of staff runs her office at home, not a mission abroad.
    World Affairs & Trade

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More Law & Politics in the News decks

Set 1: MeaningsSet 1: Quick DrillsSet 1: In ContextSet 1: PracticeSet 2: MeaningsSet 2: Quick DrillsSet 2: In Context

← All Law & Politics in the News decks, with the study guide and topic outline.

About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Senses, parts of speech and pronunciations checked against Merriam-Webster.com, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford Learner's, Longman and Cambridge learner's dictionaries; all definitions, notes and example sentences are original.
  • Word selection is our own, from general-reader news, textbooks and frequency data (wordfreq, CC BY-SA 4.0); no publisher's list is reproduced.

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