OBREPTION, civil law. Surprise. Dig. 3,5,8,1. Vide Surprise.

OBSCENITY, crim. law. Such indecency as is calculated to promote the violation¹ of the law, and the general corruption² of morals.

2. The exhibition of an obscene picture is an indictable offence at common law, although not charged to have been exhibited in public, if it be averred³ that the picture, was exhibited to sundry⁴ persons for money. 2 Serg. & Rawle, 91.

TO OBSERVE, civil law. To perform that which has been prescribed by some law or usage. Dig., 1, 3, 32.

OBSOLETE⁵. This term is applied⁶ to those laws which have lost their efficacy, without being repealed⁸,

2. A positive statute⁹, unrepealed, can never be repealed by non-user alone. 4 Yeates, Rep. 181; Id. 215; 1 Browne's Rep. Appx. 28; 13 Serg. & Rawle, 447. The disuse of a law is at most only presumptive evidence that society has consented to such a repeal⁷; however this presumption¹⁰ may operate on an unwritten law, it cannot in general act upon one which remains¹² as a legislative¹³ act on the statute book, because no presumption can set aside a certainty. A written law may indeed become obsolete when the object to which it was intended to apply, or the occasion for which it was enacted¹⁴, no longer exists. 1 P. A. Browne's R. App. 28. "It must be a very strong case," says Chief Justice Tilghman, "to justify¹⁵ the court in deciding, that an act standing¹⁶ on the statute book, unrepealed, is obsolete and invalid¹⁷. I will not say that such case may not exist-where there has been a non-user for a great number of years-where, from a change of times and manners, an ancient sleeping statute would do great mischief¹⁸, if suddenly brought into action-where a long, practice inconsistent with it has prevailed, and, specially¹⁹, where from other and latter statutes²⁰ it might be inferred that in the apprehension²¹ of the legislature, the old one was not in force." 13 Serg. & Rawle, 452; Rutherf. Inst. B. 2, c. 6, s. 19; Merl. Repert. mot Desuetude²².

OBSTRUCTING²³ PROCESS. crim. law. The act by which one or more persons at- tempt²⁴ to prevent, or do prevent, the execution of lawful²⁵ process.

2. The officer must be prevented by actual violence, or by threatened violence, accompanied by the exercise of force, or by those having capacity to employ it, by which the officer is prevented from executing his writ¹¹; the officer is not required, to expose his person by a personal conflict with the offender²⁶. 2 Wash. C. C. R. 169. See 3 Wash. C. C. R. 335.

3. This is in offence against public justice of a very high and presumptuous²⁷ nature; and more particularly so where the obstruction²⁸ is of an arrest upon criminal process: a person opposing an arrest upon criminal process becomes thereby²⁹ particeps criminis; that is, an accessary in felony, and a principal in high treason. 4 Bl. Com. 128; 2 Hawk³⁰. c. 17, s. 1; l. Russ. on Cr. 360: vide Ing. Dig. 159; 2 Gallis. Rep. 15; 2 Chit. Criminal Law, 145, note a.