Definition
The abrogation or annulment of an existing law by legislative act. Repeal operates to eliminate, revoke, or nullify a prior statute, rendering it no longer operative as law. Two forms are recognized:
1. Express repeal: A subsequent statute explicitly declares that a prior law is revoked or abrogated. The language of repeal is direct and unambiguous.
2. Implied repeal: A subsequent statute contains provisions so contrary to or irreconcilable with those of the earlier law that both cannot stand in force simultaneously. No explicit revocation language is required; the inconsistency between the two laws is itself the operative mechanism.
Repeal is a legislative power. Courts may not repeal statutes; they may interpret, construe, or decline to enforce them, but only the legislature can repeal. A power to revoke or annul a statute is treated as equivalent to a power to repeal.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To cancel, invalidate, or annul; also (archaic) to recall a person from exile or banishment.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To recall a deed, law, or statute; to revoke or rescind by authority; also (archaic and literary) to recall persons or suppress something.
The archaic personal sense — recalling a banished person — appears in legal and literary sources through at least the seventeenth century and may surface in early primary sources. Researchers encountering "repeal" in pre-modern documents should not assume the legislative meaning. The modern legal meaning has fully displaced the personal and suppression senses in contemporary usage.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Express Repeal: Explicit statutory language declaring a prior law void or revoked. Straightforward to identify in codified law and session laws.
Implied Repeal: Arising from irreconcilable conflict between statutes. Courts disfavor implied repeal and require a genuine, direct conflict before finding it — mere overlap or inconsistency is generally insufficient. The later statute controls only to the extent of the actual conflict.
Partial Repeal: Only a portion of a statute is abrogated. The remainder continues in force. Common in amending legislation.
Repeal by Implication Through Comprehensive Revision: When a legislature enacts a comprehensive revision of an entire subject area, courts may treat the revision as repealing prior statutes on the same subject even without explicit conflict, on the theory that the new scheme was intended to be complete.
Why It Matters in Research
Tracking the operative state of a law requires identifying not only whether a statute was expressly repealed but whether it was impliedly repealed by later enactment — a judgment that may be contested and may not appear in codified law at all. Session laws and parallel statutory compilations are essential for this work; codifications sometimes omit the messy history of implied repeal disputes.
The Eighteenth Amendment presents a critical research example. Its repeal by the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933 is express at the constitutional level, but the statutory apparatus of Prohibition — the Volstead Act and related legislation — required separate treatment, and the interplay between constitutional repeal and the continuing force of state laws created a complex transitional period. Researchers working on Prohibition-era legal materials must distinguish between what the Twenty-First Amendment directly accomplished and what remained until legislative action followed.
For historical sources, note that the distinction between express and implied repeal was well established by the nineteenth century, but the standard for finding implied repeal has tightened in modern courts. Older authorities may state the doctrine more broadly. The rule that courts disfavor implied repeal and require genuine irreconcilability — rather than mere inconsistency — is a modern refinement that some historical dictionary entries do not fully capture.
Researchers should also distinguish repeal from amendment, expiration, and judicial invalidation. All four can end a statute's operative effect, but they have different procedural histories, retroactive consequences, and research trails. A statute declared unconstitutional is not "repealed" in any technical sense.
The Rapalje & Lawrence and Anderson's entries retrieved under this search appear to reflect indexing errors or misattributed passages from those dictionaries; they address rents and ground rents, not repeal, and should be disregarded for this entry.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge closely on definition. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Burrill all center on abrogation of a prior law by subsequent statute, with Black's and Bouvier explicitly distinguishing express from implied repeal in nearly identical language. Burrill is the most spare, defining repeal simply as "the abrogation or annulling of a statute by a subsequent one" — useful as a baseline but omitting the express/implied distinction that is essential in practice.
Bouvier adds the valuable observation that the power to repeal is legislative and not judicial, which the other dictionaries treat as implicit. This is worth noting for researchers working in separation-of-powers contexts where the line between legislative repeal and judicial invalidation is at issue.
None of the historical dictionaries address the modern doctrine disfavoring implied repeal, the treatment of constitutional repeal versus statutory repeal, or the complexities introduced by comprehensive statutory revisions. On these points, historical dictionary entries must be supplemented with modern treatises and case law.
Jurisdictional Note
The express/implied repeal framework is consistent across American jurisdictions, but the threshold for finding implied repeal varies. Federal courts apply a strong presumption against implied repeal, requiring clear and manifest legislative intent. State courts vary somewhat in how readily they find implied repeal, and researchers working in state law contexts should not assume federal doctrine maps directly onto state practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Prohibition and Repeal — The Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)