Nebraska § 49-705 - Revisor of Statutes; supplements and reissued or replacement volumes; powers; clauses to be omitted; changes to be made, how shown.

§ 49-705. Revisor of Statutes; supplements and reissued or replacement volumes; powers; clauses to be omitted; changes to be made, how shown.

(1) The Revisor of Statutes, in preparing supplements and reissued or replacement volumes for publication and distribution, shall not alter the sense, meaning or effect of any act of the Legislature, but may (a) renumber sections and parts of sections, (b) rearrange sections, (c) change reference numbers to agree with renumbered chapters, articles, or sections, (d) substitute the proper section, article, or chapter numbers for the terms the preceding section, this article, this act, and like terms, (e) strike out figures where they are merely a repetition of written words, (f) change capitalization for the purpose of uniformity, and (g) correct manifest clerical or typographical errors. The Revisor of Statutes shall omit all titles to acts, all enacting and repealing clauses, all declarations of emergency, and all validity and construction clauses, including sections stating the effective date of salary changes, unless, from their nature, it may be necessary to retain some of them to preserve the full meaning and intent of the law.

(2) In addition to the authority provided in subsection (1) of this section, the Revisor of Statutes, in preparing supplements and reissued or replacement volumes for publication and distribution, may (a) remove obsolete matter within any section, (b) omit obsolete sections stating the effective date of salary changes, (c) remove from within any section language which the Supreme Court has held to be unconstitutional without impairing the constitutionality of the remainder of the section, (d) omit any section or sections, or any complete act, which the Supreme Court has held to be unconstitutional, (e) reinstate a section as it existed immediately prior to an amendment which the Supreme Court has held unconstitutional, (f) correct faulty internal references, and (g) harmonize provisions with former acts of the Legislature. Changes made under the provisions of this subsection shall be effective only upon publication in the supplement or replacement volume, which publication shall contain a brief note explaining the change made and citing this subsection as the authority therefor. No change made under the provisions of this subsection shall effect any change in the substantive meaning of any section. If the Revisor of Statutes is in doubt whether or not a specific change is authorized by this subsection, he shall not make the change but shall propose it as a legislative bill at the next regular session of the Legislature.

The Revisor of Statutes is obligated by law to print and publish laws as enacted by the Legislature and to not exercise discretion in excising a portion of these laws. The Revisor cannot make corrections or modifications which change the substantive meaning of a statute as enacted by the Legislature. State v. Urbano, 256 Neb. 194, 589 N.W.2d 144 (1999).

The fact that the language of a later-enacted statute is nearly identical to the language of an earlier-enacted statute which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional does not render the more recent statute unconstitutional unless and until it is declared so by the Supreme Court, and, unless and until a law is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the authority granted to the Revisor of Statutes in subsection (2) of this section does not become operative. State ex rel. Wright v. Pepperl, 221 Neb. 664, 380 N.W.2d 259 (1986).

Changes made by the Revisor of Statutes in preparing supplements and reissued or replacement volumes of revised statutes cannot change substantive meaning of any statute as enacted by the Legislature. State v. Karel, 204 Neb. 573, 284 N.W.2d 12 (1979).