§ 1. On The Direct Cessation Of Law

— I. Because of a new law. A law is taken away by a new law which expressly revokes the prior law in whole or in part, or is contrary to it, because it sanctions things which cannot be composed with the prior law, or because it orders anew the whole matter of the prior law from the beginning (c. 22).

The first suppression is formal, the second and third are virtual. The reason of the third is this, because it is adverse to the common good that the same subject matter be under a twofold ordering.

The complete revocation of a law is called abrogation; derogation is called its partial revocation; obrogation, finally, the introduction of a contrary law.

Since a law is presumed useful to the common good, its cessation is judged odious. Wherefore rights are rather to be harmonized than opposed.

Therefore a general law indeed obrogates a general law because of contrariety, but not a special law of places or persons, unless something else is expressly provided in the new law. (Cf. c. 22).

— II. When the end ceases. A law also ceases if its end ceases contrarily, that is, if the law has become harmful, unreasonable; indeed if for the community the end has adequately vanished, so that the law has commonly become useless. This uselessness can occur only in indifferent matter. But indifferent matter, as such, the legislator cannot command: the law would no longer be an ordination to the common good. Cf. 1, 2, q. 109 art. 4 ad 3; Suarez, Leg. 6, 9, 6. Suppose that, on account of public security from disease, assemblies are prohibited: when the plague ceases, the prohibition itself will cease.

What if not commonly, but in the case of a particular person, the end of the law has ceased negatively, that is, it has become useless? The particular act always preserves the honesty of the thing commanded. To permit an exception is to give place to much hallucination. Wherefore the common good itself seems to stand against that exception. Therefore, with the more common opinion, for example Suarez, l. c.; Laymann, De legib. (I, 4) 21, 3; Lehmkuhl, I, 276, 277; it must be said that the law does not cease because of particular uselessness.

Nevertheless, where scandal has been absent and uselessness is clearly certain, with St. Alphonsus, I, 199, the use of the more benign opinion can be tolerated.

But this can no longer be transferred to canonical laws which are said to be founded on a presumption of danger, since we have the contrary expressly promulgated in canon 21.