Ishitta Joy was proud to raise her right hand and take the oath of allegiance to the United States, at a swearing in ceremony for newly naturalized citizens of the United States on May 22, 2015.

The searing in ceremony was the culmination of a lot of work. People who, like Ishitta Joy, apply for American citizenship must undergo a lot of close questioning from officers of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, or USCIS. If English is not their native tongue they must learn it and pass a test. And they must learn about the functioning of the government and their roles as citizens, and pass a test on that, too.

To help them along the way, applicants are provided with government-issued flashcards that help them drill the pertinent facts into their heads. Sticklers for detail are sometimes surprised to find out that by the time they take the test, they are able to notice that some of the answers they must give are wrong.

For example, one of the questions asks applicants to name two members of the President's cabinet. One of the correct answers to this question is, the Vice President. The Vice President is indeed a cabinet level officer, but is not a Cabinet member, which by definition are appointed heads of executive departments, such as Defense and State. The Vice Presidency, of course, is an elected office.

Another question asks for a definition of the term, "rule of law." There are four acceptable answers to the question, but legal authorities who have seen them say that none of them is correct. Technically, rule of law means that judges have the authority to decide cases, regardless of the social status or the parties involved, or of any other consideration other than the law as it is written. That was not one of the choices on the citizenship exam.

The current citizenship test was created by the USCIS after six years of tuning and fine tuning, and with the help of legal scholars, educators, and historians. Those sticklers for detail who are applying for citizenship apparently tend to bite their lips and provide the answers they know are considered correct, even though their accuracy is not always one hundred percent.

Ishitta Joy managed to provide the correct answers. She passed the test and was sworn in as a naturalized citizen over the Memorial Day weekend. The oath that she and others took goes, in part, like this:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America...so help me God."

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