Dead-letter Sentence Examples

By the terms of the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead letter.

The reforms became more or less a dead letter.

The fact that a voluntary society with limited funds must contest the illegal decisions of local councils, without government support, seems likely to render this portion of the act of 1908 a dead letter.

True, she now agreed to recognise the independence of the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic and Batavian (Dutch) republics; but the masterful acquisitiveness of the First Consul and the weak conduct of Austrian and British affairs at that time soon made that clause of the treaty a dead letter.

This result revolted public opinion; the bishops acquired the habit (rendered easier by the personal expense involved in setting the law in motion) of vetoing, under the power given to them in the act, all prosecutions; and the act became a dead letter.

For many years, however, these laws were little more than a dead letter.

Unfortunately this salutary legislation remained a dead letter.

But the estates felt that the maintenance of their liberties demanded more substantial guarantees than the dead letter of ancient laws.

Much apprehension had been caused by the establishment of a permanent committee for foreign affairs in the Bundesrat, over which the Bavarian representative was to preside; but the clause remained a dead letter.

On the 4th of March the constitution was published; but it proved all but as distasteful to Czechs and Croats as to the Magyars, and the speedy successes of the Hungarian arms made it, for the while, a dead letter.

The one outlet remaining, however, that of Western Australia, was soon afterwards (1867) closed to convict emigrants; and this part of the committee's recommendations became a dead letter.

The actual originator of this policy was Nicholas II., probably at Hildebrand's suggestion; but the decree remained practically a dead letter until Gregory's accession.

Divine revelation, said Munzer, was not received from the church, nor from preaching, least of all from the dead letter of the Bible; it was received solely and directly from the Spirit of God.

A conscription law of 1894 provides for a compulsory military service between the ages of twenty-one and fifty years, with two years' actual service in the regulars for those between twentyone and twenty-five, but the law is practically a dead letter.

The enactments against Irish dress and customs, and against marriage and fostering proved a dead letter.

It remained indeed unrepealed, as many laws have done since, long after it had become a mere dead letter.

For the more orthodox, Deterministic Chaos Theory seemed a dead letter issue.

Thus a step forward was made in securing the freedom of conscience proclaimed in the October manifesto and denounced by a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kiev in 1908, though the rights granted by the Duma were seriously curtailed in the Imperial Council, and have been largely rendered a dead letter by the action of the administration.

Proposals made by the council for the modification and improvement of the existing laws and regulations which concerned it were to receive an answer from the government within six months; this provision has remained a dead letter.