Definition
Animus capiendi (Latin: "intention to take") is a term of art in legal Latin denoting the mental state or specific intent to take or capture something — most commonly property, goods, or a vessel. It functions as the mens rea component in contexts where the act of taking is insufficient alone to establish a legal claim or legal wrong; the actor's intent to take must be affirmatively present and demonstrable.
The term appears most frequently in admiralty and prize law, where courts must determine whether a belligerent or captor acted with the requisite intent to seize a vessel or its cargo as a prize of war, rather than merely detaining it for inspection or exercising some lesser form of control.
Common Confusion
Animus capiendi should not be conflated with animus furandi, the intent to steal. Both involve an intent to take, but animus furandi carries the additional element of intent to deprive permanently and without right — the specific mental state required for larceny at common law. Animus capiendi is the broader and more neutral term, encompassing lawful capture (as in prize law) as well as potentially unlawful seizure. In historical pleadings, using one where the other was meant could be legally significant.
Similarly, animus capiendi is distinct from animus possidendi, the intent to possess. Taking and possessing are sequential concepts, and courts in property disputes sometimes drew a line between the moment of capture and the assertion of continued possession.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to a cluster of animus phrases that populate admiralty, property, and criminal law contexts in historical sources. Researchers working with prize law materials — particularly cases arising from the Napoleonic Wars era, the War of 1812, or the American Civil War — will encounter animus capiendi in arguments about whether a seizure was lawful and complete. The distinction between physical control and the intent to take was jurisdictionally significant: a vessel boarded but not yet formally claimed as a prize might be treated differently depending on whether animus capiendi could be established at the moment of boarding.
The term also surfaces in early property law discussions, where intent to take is relevant to distinguishing trespass from theft, or lawful from unlawful taking of chattels.
A key research trap: the three primary historical dictionaries all route to the same admiralty citation — 4 C. Rob. Adm. 126 and 155 — referring to Christopher Robinson's Admiralty Reports, a foundational English prize law series. Researchers who trace the term through American materials may find it cited at second or third hand from Robinson without independent American authority. Do not assume the American courts applied the doctrine identically to Robinson's prize law framework.
Burrill's entry is useful for a second reason: it places animus capiendi immediately alongside animus derelinquendi (the intent to abandon), signaling that these terms function as conceptual opposites in admiralty contexts. Whether a party intended to take or to abandon was often the dispositive question in prize and wreck cases. Researchers should treat these terms as a paired set when reviewing historical admiralty pleadings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in complete agreement on the core definition — all three render it as the intention to take — and all three anchor the definition to Robinson's Admiralty Reports. This convergence reflects the term's origin in English prize law rather than American common law development, and explains why American dictionary compilers treated it as settled without extended elaboration.
Burrill provides the most useful entry of the three because it situates animus capiendi within a broader taxonomy of animus phrases, pointing the reader toward animus derelinquendi as a natural counterpart. Black's and Bouvier's treat the term in isolation, which understates how these Latin intention-phrases operated as a coordinated analytical vocabulary in prize and admiralty courts.
None of the three dictionaries address the term's application beyond admiralty law. Researchers encountering animus capiendi in criminal law or property contexts will find no guidance in these sources and should look to treatises on larceny and intent, where the phrase occasionally appears in discussions of the felonious intent required for theft.