REVOCATION. – In Church law the term has a single meaning and is concretely realized exclusively in an act performed by the competent legislative or administrative authority for the purpose of abrogating existing juridical norms or administrative dispositions; in civil legislation, on the other hand, it assumes a twofold meaning: one reflects all the acts of a party legitimately interested in revoking directly or judicially a specific legal transaction or contract; the other refers to an extraordinary means of challenging judgments, namely a procedural institution.
The CIC refers to the institution of revocation in various canons. When treating the abrogation of law, can. 22 establishes that canon law ceases to be in force, among other reasons, through express abrogation, that is, when the new law expressly states that the previous one is abrogated. It is true that in the aforementioned canon the word revocatio is not explicitly used, but that it was intended to be invoked is clearly inferred from the subsequent can. 23: In dubio revocatio legis praeexistentis non praesumitur. Other cases of revocation occur in the matter of privileges and rescripts. In fact, can. 60 lists among the principal cases of cessation of a privilege the revocation notified to the interested party: rescriptum, per pecuniam superioris actum revocatum, perdurat usque dum revocatio ei, qui illud obtinuit, significetur; likewise, can. 71 speaks of the revocation of privileges contained in the CIC itself only in the case of a subsequent general law. Rescripts, which, like privileges, are ordinarily perpetual, also cease through revocation when the granting authority deems that the concession contained in the rescript no longer corresponds to the good of the individual or to the criteria of proper ecclesiastical administration. Other cases invoking the institution of revocation are those relating to the impossibility of revoking a donation made to churches propter ingratum praelati vel externi animum (can. 1036 § 4) and the revocation of a benefice by the Apostolic See (can. 1470 § 1, n. 2).
The Italian Civil Code also contemplates various cases of revocation. Among those deserving greater prominence are the revocation of a mandate (art. 1722 § 2), by which said contract is extinguished if the mandator causes it to cease through unilateral withdrawal. As for the manner of effecting it, revocation may be express or tacit (art. 1724).
A donation may be revoked for two reasons, exhaustively set out in the Civil Code (art. 800), namely for ingratitude or for the subsequent birth of children. Both causes of revocation have peremptory time limits for the filing of the claim: the first must be brought by the donor or his heirs within one year from the day on which the donor became aware of the fact that permits revocation; the second within five years from the day of the birth of the last legitimate child or descendant or from the knowledge of the existence of the child or descendant, or from the recognition of a natural child.
Also to be recalled is the total or partial revocation by a testator of a will. Revocation under art. 680 of the Civil Code may be made “only by a new will or by an act received by a notary in the presence of two witnesses in which the testator personally declares that he revokes in whole or in part the previous disposition.” A peculiar case of revocation by operation of law of a will occurs, pursuant to art. 687, upon the subsequent birth of children as legitimary heirs.
The Code of Civil Procedure then contemplates revocation as an extraordinary means of challenging judgments, which may be brought for reasons exhaustively provided, before the same judge who rendered the judgment sought to be annulled, when, the judgment no longer being subject to other appeals that allow for an investigation of fact, the injustice of the decision could not otherwise be remedied. This institution corresponds to that of revision within the sphere of criminal procedure (arts. 553 and 553) and to that of restitutio in integrum (v.) in canonical procedure (cann. 1092 and 1093). Art. 395 of the Code of Civil Procedure lists the specific cases that permit such an appeal: namely, 1) if the judgment is the result of the fraud of one of the parties to the detriment of the other; 2) if judgment was rendered on the basis of evidence subsequently recognized or declared false after the judgment, or which the losing party was unaware had been so recognized or declared before the judgment; 3) if after the judgment a decisive document is discovered that the losing party could not have produced; 4) if the judgment is the result of a factual error apparent from the evidence gathered in the proceedings; 5) if the judgment is contrary to another previous judgment having res judicata authority between the parties, provided that it did not rule on the relevant exception; 6) if the judgment is the result of the fraud of the judge established by a judgment that has become res judicata. Against the judgment of revocation, as is obvious, the ordinary means of appeal lie; some writers, however, exclude that it may in principle be subject to a new revocation, in order to satisfy the fundamental requirement of legal certainty.