OBSOLETE. A term applied to laws which have lost their efficacy without being repealed.
A positive statute, unrepealed, can never be repealed by non-user alone ; Respublica v. County Com'rs, 4 Yeates (Pa.) 181; Wright v. Crane, 13 S. & R. (Pa.) 447. The disuse of a law is at most only presumptive evi dence that society has consented to such a repeal ; however this presumption may oper ate on an unwritten law, it cannot, in gener al, act upon one which remains as a legisla tive act on the statute-book ; because no pre sumption can set certainty. A writ ten law may indeed become obsolete when the object to which it was intended to apply, or the occasion for which it was enacted, no longer exists; 1 P. A. Bro. App. 28; Wil liamson v. Bacot, 1 Bay 62. "It must be a very strong case," says Tilghman, C. J., "to justify the court in deciding that an act standing on the statute-book, unrepealed, is obsolete and invalid. I will not say that such case may not exist,—where there has been a non-user for a great number of years,—where, from a change of times and manners, an ancient sleeping statute would do great mischief if suddenly brought into action,—where a long practice inconsistent with it has prevailed, and especially where from other and later statutes it might be inferred that in. the apprehension of the legislature the old one was not in force." Wright v. Crane, 13 S. & R. (Pa.) 452;
Rutherford, Inst. IA 2, c. 6, s. 19; Merlin, Repert, Desuetude. In Appeal of Porter, 30 Pa. 496, it was held that a statute is not re pealed by non-user, but that the usage and customs of an advancing people may dis place a statute which has become unfitted for modern use. It may be repealed by long non-user, especially where the current of leg islation shows that it was regarded by the legislature as being no longer in force; Pear son v. Distillery, 72 Ia. 348, 34 N. W. 1; con tra, Snowden v. Snowden, 1 Bland (Md.) 550. An act of Congress enacted in 1874 cannot be regarded as obsolete because recourse has not often been had to it since its passage; Costello v. Palmer, 20 App. D. C. 210. The fact that a penal statute has been on the stat ute books for over 40 years,' and has not been applied in a particular manner, does' not preclude the application and enforcement of the statute in that manner if it may properly be so applied and enforced ; State v. Nease, 46 Or. 433, 80 Pac. 897. ' "Neither contrary practice nor disuse can repeal the positive enactment of a statute; L. R. 3 P. C. 650, per Ha therly, L. C.; what ever be the law in Scotland ; McCl. & Y. 119. In the civil law, according to Julianus, laws were abrogated through disuse; Taylor, Ju rispr. 491.