§ 1506.Construction of Provisions As Restatements and Continuations

When a statute gets rewritten, courts sometimes need to know whether a particular rule is new law or just a restatement of something that was already the law. Section 1506 answers that question for this chapter. Where a provision in the current version of this chapter is substantially the same as a provision in the version that existed before January 1, 1969, addressing the same subject, it should be construed as a restatement and continuation of the earlier rule, not as a new enactment.

That construction rule matters for legal questions that turn on when a rule first took effect, such as whether a right vested or a limitations period began running under the old law or the new one. By treating substantially identical provisions as continuous rather than freshly created, this section keeps the 1969 rewrite from accidentally resetting legal relationships that had already formed under the earlier statute.