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Presidential Communications: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This post is coauthored by Robert Brammer and Barbara Bavis, senior legal reference specialists. We sometimes receive questions about communications sent to Congress by the president that concern legislation. Since this post pertains to legislative history, our focus is on executive communications, presidential messages, veto messages, and signing statements. If you would like to learn more about …

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Locating Congressional Documents: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, senior legal reference specialists. Congressional documents concern a wide variety of subjects and include all papers ordered printed by the House or Senate apart from congressional committee reports. As described by the Government Publishing Office (GPO), congressional documents “may include reports of executive departments and independent organizations, …

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Locating a Compiled Federal Legislative History: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, senior legal reference specialists. Compiling a federal legislative history may seem daunting, but it does not have to be. We hope, through our last few Beginner’s Guides, that we have made this process easier for researchers.  There is another, possibly less complicated, option for finding …

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How to Locate an Unpublished Congressional Hearing: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, senior legal reference specialists. Our previous post discussed how to locate a Published Congressional Hearing. In this guide, we will show you how to locate unpublished congressional hearings, which can often pose more of a challenge to researchers new to the area. Congressional hearings have …

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Lemon Laws: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Barbara Bavis

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, senior legal reference specialists. In response to our last post on consumer protection law, we determined there was additional interest in “lemon laws.”  Lemon laws are defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as statutes “designed to protect a consumer who buys a substandard automobile, usu[ally] by …

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Consumer Protection: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Barbara Bavis

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, senior legal reference specialists. Consumer protection touches on a number of areas of law, and as such, has been broadly defined by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary as “[f]ederal and state laws established to protect retail purchasers of goods and services from inferior, adulterated, hazardous, and …

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Foreclosure Defense: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This post is coauthored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, legal reference specialists   The loss of a home to foreclosure can be devastating financially and emotionally. In this guide, we hope to provide you with resources that can aid you in researching a defense to a foreclosure action. Please keep in mind that foreclosure …

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Discovery: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by: Barbara Bavis

This post was co-authored by Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer, Legal Reference Specialists. We receive a wide array of questions here at the Law Library of Congress—from detailed foreign legal research, to tracing U.S. federal legislation, and everything in between—but one area of legal research on which we consistently receive requests for assistance is the …