ACT OF PARLIAMENT, parli-ment. A res olution or law passed by all the three branches of the English legislature, the king (or queen), lords, and commons; or, as it is formally ex pressed, "by the King's Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assem bled, and by the authority of the same." An act of parliament thus made is the highest le gal authority acknowledged by the constitution. It binds every subject, and, with a few excep tions, every alien in the land, and even the sov ereign himself, if named therein. And in England it cannot be altered, amended, dispensed with, suspended, or repealed but in the same forms and by the same authority of parliament. In Scotland, however, a long course of contrary usage or of disuse may have the effect of depriv. ing a statute of its obligation; for by the Scotch law a statute may become obsolete by disuse and cease to be legally binding. It was formerly held in England that the King might in many cases dispense with statutes, especially such as were of a penal character; but by the statute I NV. and M., st. 2, e. 2, it is declared that the suspending or dispensing with laws by royal au thority without consent of parliament is illegal.
An act of parliament is either public or private. A public act regards the whole empire or one of its main subdivisions, in which case it is gen eral; or a subordinate part. in which case it is local; but the operation of a private act is con fined to particular persons and private concerns. As the law till lately stood, the courts of law were bound ex officio to take judicial notice, as it is called, of public acts—that is, to recognize these acts as known and published law, without the necessity of their being specially pleaded and proved; but it was otherwise in regard to pri vate acts, so that in order to claim any advan tage under a private act it was necessary to plead it and set it forth particularly. But now, by the 13 and 14 Viet. c. 21. s. 7, every act of
parliament is to be taken to be a public one, and judicially noticed as such unless the contrary be expressly declared.
An act of parliament begins to operate from the time when it receives the royal assent, un less some other time be fixed for the purpose by the act itself. The rule on this subject in Eng land was formerly different, for at common law every act of parliament which had no provision to the contrary was considered as soon as it passed (i.e., received the royal assent) as hav ing been in force retrospectively from the first day of the session of parliament in which it passed, though in fact it might not have re ceived the royal assent, or even been introduced into parliament, until long after that day; and this strange principle was rigidly observed for centuries. The ancient acts of the Scotch par liament were proclaimed in all the county towns, burghs, and even in the baron courts. This mode of promulgation was, however, gradually dropped as the use of printing became common, and in 1581 an act was passed declaring publi cation at the Market Cross of Edinburgh to be sufficient. British statutes require no formal promulgation, and in order to fix the time from which they shall become binding it was enacted by 33 Om I e. 13, that overt' act of par liament to be passed after April ti, 1793. shall commence from the date of the indorsement by the clerk of parliament stating the day, month. and year When the act was passed and received the royal a;;011t. the 00111111e1100111ent Shall in the net itself be otherwise provided for.
.lets parliament are referred to by the year of the sovereign's reign, and the chapter of the statutes for that year. They were first printed in the reign of Richard Ili.. originally in Latin, hut since the fourth year of henry VII. in Eng. lish. The collective body of such acts constitute the Statutes of the []calm. See STATUTF: PAR LIAMENT. and the authorities there referred to.