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Fair Labor Standards Act

(Encyclopedia)Fair Labor Standards Act or Wages and Hours Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1938 to establish minimum living standards for workers engaged directly or indirectly in interstate commerce, including ...

Embargo Act of 1807

(Encyclopedia)Embargo Act of 1807, passed Dec. 22, 1807, by the U.S. Congress in answer to the British orders in council restricting neutral shipping and to Napoleon's restrictive Continental System. The U.S. merch...

Freedom of Information Act

(Encyclopedia)Freedom of Information Act (1966), law requiring that U.S. government agencies release their records to the public on request, unless the information sought falls into a category specifically exempted...

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act

(Encyclopedia)Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, officially the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, U.S. budget deficit reduction measure. The law provided for automatic spending cuts to take effect ...

Americans with Disabilities Act

(Encyclopedia)Americans with Disabilities Act, U.S. civil-rights law, enacted 1990, that forbids discrimination of various sorts against persons with physical or mental handicaps. Its primary emphasis is on enablin...

National Defense Education Act

(Encyclopedia)National Defense Education Act (NDEA), federal legislation passed in 1958 providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private. NDEA was instituted primarily to stimulate ...

Taft-Hartley Labor Act

(Encyclopedia)Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the ...

Wages and Hours Act

(Encyclopedia)Wages and Hours Act: see Fair Labor Standards Act. ...

Tenure of Office Act

(Encyclopedia)Tenure of Office Act, in U.S. history, measure passed on Mar. 2, 1867, by Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson; it forbade the President to remove any federal officeholder appointed by a...

British North America Act

(Encyclopedia)British North America Act, law passed by the British Parliament in 1867 that provided for the unification of the Canadian provinces into the dominion of Canada. Until 1982 the act also functioned as t...