The Second Edition of this renowned treasure trove of information about the most important laws and treaties enacted by the U.S. Congress now deepens its historical coverage and examines an entire decade of new legislation. Landmark Legislation 1774-2012 includes additional acts and treaties chosen for their historical significance or their precedential importance for later areas of major federal legislative activity in the over 200 years since the convocation of the Continental Congress. Brand new chapters expand coverage to include the last five numbered Congresses (10 years of activity from 2003-2012), which has seen landmark legislation in the areas of health insurance and health care reform; financial regulatory reform; fiscal stimulus and the Temporary Asset Relief Program; federal support for stem cell research; reform of federal financial support for public schools and higher education; and much more. Features & Benefits: Each chapter covers one of the numbered Congresses with a historical essay, followed by the major acts of that Congress arranged in chronological order of passage – with each act summarized. A Finder’s Guide summarizes all of the acts and treaties into approximately 40 separate topical policy areas. The work’s extensive bibliography has been expanded and updated. This one-volume resource is a must-have for any public or academic library, especially those with strong American history or political science collections.

A compilation of popular names by which federal and state acts and cases have been referred to or cited together with an identification of each act in terms of its constitutional or statutory references and each case in terms of the volume and page reference where the text of the decision may be found.

The third edition of Media Law and Ethics features a complete updating of all major U.S. Supreme Court cases and lower court decisions through 1998; more discussion throughout the book on media ethics and the role of ethics in media law; and an updated appendix that now features a copy of the U.S. Constitution, new sample copyright and trademark registration forms, and the current versions of major media codes of ethics, including the new code of the Society of Professional Journalists. Extensively updated and expanded chapters provide: *more detailed explanations of the legal system, the judicial process, and the relationship between media ethics and media law; *new cases in this developing area of the law that has attracted renewed attention from the U.S. Supreme Court; *the new Telecommunications Act and the Communications Decency Act; *a discussion of telecommunications and the Internet; *new developments in access to courts, records, and meetings such as recent court decisions and statutory changes; and *more information about trademark and trade secret laws and recent changes in copyright laws, as well as major court decisions on intellectual property. The book has also been updated to include new developments in obscenity and indecency laws, such as the Communications Decency Act, and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reno vs. ACLU. In addition, the instructor's manual includes a listing of electronic sources of information about media law, sample exams, and a sample syllabus.