| A | B |
|---|
| due process | a fair trial; correct legal procedures including the right to legal counsel (an attorney) |
| checks and balances | a system which guards against absolute power by providing for separate executive, judicial, and legislative bodies who share powers and may choose to block procedures of the other branches |
| appeal | to apply for a review of a case; to take a case to a higher court after being found guilty |
| impeach | to bring charges against an official |
| quorum | a minimum number of representatives needed to conduct a congressional session |
| emoluments | salaries |
| veto | to turn down or refuse legislation |
| commerce | the trade of goods |
| naturalization | the process by which a person is granted citizenship |
| counterfeit | to copy money or to make fake money |
| habeas corpus | A legal term meaning that an accused person must be presented physically before the court with a statement demonstrating sufficient cause for arrest. Thus, no accuser may imprison someone indefinitely without bringing that person and the charges against him or her into a courtroom. |
| bill of attainder | A legislative act pronouncing a person guilty of a crime, usually treason, without trial and subjecting that person to capital punishment and attainder. Such acts are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. |
| ex post facto | something that takes place after the facts |
| rotation | the spin of a body on its axis |
| orbit | noun – the path that a body follows as it travels around another body in space; verb – to travel around another body in space |
| revolution | one complete trip along an orbit |
| comet | a small body of ice, rock, and cosmic dust that follows an elliptical orbit around the sun and gives off dust in the form of a tail as it passes close tot the sun |
| asteroid | small rocky body that revolves around the sun |
| meteoroid | small rocky bodies that revolve around the sun (smaller than asteroids) |
| meteor | a bright streak of light that results when a meteoroid burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere |
| meteorite | a meteoroid that reaches the Earth’s surface without burning up completely |
| astronomical unit | the distance between the Earth and the Sun |
| nuclear fusion | the process of two or more nuclei fusing to form another nucleus; the source of the sun’s energy |
| summer | the season when the Earth is titled toward the sun |
| winter | – the season when the Earth is tilted away from the sun |
| solstice | either of the two times a year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator |
| equinox | the time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth |
| solar eclipse | when sunlight is blocked by the moon |
| lunar eclipse | when sunlight on its way to the moon is blocked by the Earth |
