Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793
Commencement
8 April 1793
Other legislation
Amended byInterpretation Act 1978
Status: Amended
Text of statute as originally enacted
Revised text of statute as amended

The Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793 (

come into force unless the relevant act specified some other date instead of the first day of the session in which they were passed. The commencement part of the Act was repealed by the Interpretation Act 1978
and replaced with Section 4 of the same Act, which says the same thing as the repealed portion of the 1793 Act.

Commencement of Acts of Parliament prior to this Act

Previously, most Acts of Parliament were ex post facto laws, meaning that they were deemed to have come into force on the first day of the session in which they were passed (because of the legal fiction that a session lasted one day).[2] This meant, prior to the enactment of this Act, that all Acts had come into force retroactively – some as much as a year before they were actually passed. The preamble to the Commencement Act said that this historic practice was liable to produce "great and manifest injustice".

Provisions of this Act

This Act provides that it applies to Acts of Parliament passed after 8 April 1793.

Endorsement of Acts with the date of royal assent

This Act imposes a duty on the

title
of that Act, and that that endorsement is part of the endorsed Act.

Commencement of Acts

This Act originally provided that the endorsed Act was to come into force on the date specified by the endorsement, where no other commencement was specified by the endorsed Act. The relevant words were repealed[3] on 1 January 1979[4] and have been replaced by section 4 of the Interpretation Act 1978, which says the same thing.

Dating of Acts

Because of the fiction that an Act had come into force on the first day of the session, it was also the convention in citing a pre-1793 Act to date it to the year in which the session had commenced. In the context of modern historical writing, however, it is more usual to date Acts (especially well-known and historically significant Acts) to the actual year in which they passed through Parliament. This leads to discrepancies in the way in which the same Act may be cited or referred to: for example, the

25 Geo. 2
. c. 30) to amend the 1750 Act.

See also

References

  1. short title was conferred by section 1 of, and the first schedule to, the Short Titles Act 1896
    (see e.g. The Public General Acts 1896, HMSO, 1896)
  2. ^ Partridge v. Strange and Croker (1553) 1 Plowd. 77
  3. ^ The Interpretation Act 1978, section 25(1) and Schedule 3
  4. ^ The Interpretation Act 1978, section 26

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Acts_of_Parliament_(Commencement)_Act_1793&oldid=1166430381"