In the recent journalistic coverage of the General Assembly's inadvertent revocation of a clause about day-of-rest legislation, we often heard that the Assembly's stupid mistake had inadvertently 'revived centuries-old blue-laws' (or words to that effect).
  In the colonial era the Assembly periodically undertook wholesale revisions ("revisals") of the laws (1705 comes to mind) and of course a committee comprising Edmund Pendleton, Jefferson et al reworked the legal code in the 1770s .....
  More recently, I recall pretty clearly that Virginia had a major revision of its statutes in 1942 (because its personnel provisions were still in force in the early 70s).
  The recent bungling aroused my curiosity as to the last time Virginia's statutes were entirely revised? Surely, I would think, the inadvertent revocation of a modern law might revive something from mid-20th century but hardly something from the colonial era.
  Related to that puzzle, I'm curious about the immeidate effects (if any) the Commonwealth's periodic adoptions of new constitutions had on the permanence and continuation of the legal code in force at the time a new constitution was adopted?

Jon Kukla

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