Repeal - Express or Implied Repeal

Express or Implied Repeal

The repeal of a statute may be either express or implied.

Express repeal occurs where express words are used in a statute to repeal an earlier statute. They are now usually included in a table in a schedule to the statute, for reasons of convenience.

In the United States, when a bill is passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president, or Congress overrides a presidential veto, the various provisions contained within the newly enacted law are rearranged according to their policy content and cataloged in the United States Code—a compilation of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States. To repeal any element of an enacted law, Congress must pass a new law containing repeal language and the codified statute's location in the U.S. Code (including the title, chapter, part, section, paragraph and clause). In this way, Congress (and the president) must follow the same rules and procedures for passing any law. When statutes are repealed, their text is simply deleted from the Code and replaced by a note summarizing what used to be there. Once deleted, the repealed statute no longer has the force of law. All repeals of parts of the US Code are, therefore, express repeals.

Implied repeal occurs where two statutes are mutually inconsistent. The effect is that the later statute repeals the earlier statute pro tanto (in so far as it is inconsistent). There is a presumption against implied repeal.