DESUETUDE

Desuetude

In law, desuetude is a doctrine that causes statutes, similar legislation or legal principles to lapse and become unenforceable by a long habit of non-enforcement or lapse of time. It is what happens to laws that are not repealed when they become obsolete. It is the legal doctrine that long and continued non-use of a law renders it invalid, at least in the sense that courts will no longer tolerate punishing its transgressors.

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desuetude

Noun

  1. disuse, obsolescence (for example, the state of a custom that is no longer observed nor practised)


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: desuetude
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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