Desuetude

[1] The policy of inserting sunset clauses into a constitution or charter of rights (as in Canada since 1982) or into regulations and other delegated/subordinate legislation made under an act (as in Australia since the early 1990s) can be regarded as a statutory codification of this jus commune doctrine.

The doctrine went into decline from the Middle Ages, when the counter-notion became prevalent that enrolled bill rule existed: the king's assent was required to nullify a clear or settled law; its second limb is similar, stating later acts and other legislation are to be preferred when conflicting.

In Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York, 397 U.S. 664, 678 (1970), the United States Supreme Court asserted that: "It is obviously correct that no one acquires a vested or protected right in violation of the Constitution by long use, even when that span of time covers our entire national existence and indeed predates it."

In 1825, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to enforce the traditional punishment of ducking for women convicted as common scolds, stating that "total disuse of any civil institution for ages past, may afford just and rational objections against disrespected and superannuated ordinances."

In Poe v. Ullman, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Connecticut's ban on birth control, writing: The undeviating policy of nullification by Connecticut of its anti-contraceptive laws throughout all the long years that they have been on the statute books bespeaks more than prosecutorial paralysis ... "Deeply embedded traditional ways of carrying out state policy ..." – or not carrying it out – "are often tougher and truer law than the dead words of the written text.