As any lawyer knows, statutes are not normally up there with a Dan Brown novel when it comes to page-turning over-the-top drama. Let’s face it, they tend to be pretty dull. But it turns out the law has not always been such a snore – it has simply lost its fiery passion with the passing of the years. A Law Society librarian drew this intriguing snippet to Obiter’s attention from a book on statutory interpretation. It concerns the definition of that dry old term ‘repeal’.

‘The law has made use of many synonyms for the operation known as repeal, often in the same sentence… The desire to emphasise that an Act is consigned to limbo perhaps reached its extreme when a statute of Richard III was ordered to be "annulled and utterly destroyed… taken out of the Roll of Parliament, and cancelled and burnt, and put in perpetual oblivion".

‘There is no special wording required, however, and the one word "repeal" will delete the provision as effectively as any verbal jumping on its bones or scattering of its ashes.’

Bennion on Statutory Interpretation, fifth edition, page 301, published by Lexis Nexis.