Definition
A Roman civil law servitude giving the holder the right to draw water from a fountain, pool, or spring located on another person's land. The right is incorporeal — it confers access to a water source without transferring ownership of the land or the water itself. As a predial servitude, aquae haustus attached to a dominant estate and burdened a servient estate, running with the land rather than belonging to any individual personally.
Note on spelling: The term appears in the source material as "AQUZ HAUSTUS," which is a typographical corruption of the correct Latin, *aquae haustus* ("drawing of water"). Researchers encountering either form in historical sources should treat them as the same term.
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Common Confusion
Aquae haustus is one of several Roman water servitudes that researchers frequently conflate. *Aquae ductus* was the right to conduct water across another's land by channel or pipe — a more extensive right involving infrastructure. *Aquae haustus* was the narrower right: drawing water at a fixed point, with no right to construct conduits unless separately granted. A third servitude, *iter ad aquam* (or *actus ad aquam*), governed the right of passage to reach the water source. These three rights were legally distinct and could be granted independently; historical sources sometimes bundle them loosely under general discussions of water rights, which can obscure which right is actually at issue in a given text.
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Why It Matters in Research
**Structural pattern: historical evolution with deep Roman law roots and limited modern survival.**
Researchers will encounter aquae haustus almost exclusively in one of three contexts: (1) Roman and civil law primary sources and their commentaries, (2) early American and British treatises on easements and servitudes that drew on civilian learning, and (3) Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed-jurisdiction materials where civil law servitude doctrine remained operative.
In common law jurisdictions, aquae haustus does not exist as a named doctrine, but its functional equivalent — the easement to draw water — does. Researchers moving between civil and common law sources must be careful not to import the technical structure of the Roman servitude into common law analysis, or vice versa. The civil law form is predial (attached to land) by definition; common law water-drawing easements can be either appurtenant or in gross depending on jurisdiction and grant.
In historical sources, the Digest and Institutes citations that accompany aquae haustus entries (Inst. 2, 3, 2; Dig. 8, 3, 1, 1) are genuine and can be verified in standard editions of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Researchers consulting nineteenth-century American treatises on easements — particularly those with civilian training or influence — may find aquae haustus used as an organizing example for the broader category of water servitudes, even in jurisdictions that had formally adopted common law.
The term appears in limited Black's editions and is largely absent from twentieth-century American legal dictionaries, which reflects the marginalization of Roman law vocabulary in mainstream U.S. legal practice. Its presence in a source is itself a signal: texts that deploy aquae haustus as a working term, rather than a historical curiosity, are likely drawing on civilian rather than common law methodology.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines aquae haustus as a civil law servitude consisting in the right to draw water from the fountain, pool, or spring of another, citing Institutes 2, 3, 2 and Digest 8, 3, 1, 1. The definition is accurate and consistent with the Roman sources. Black's does not elaborate on the distinction between aquae haustus and related water servitudes, nor does it address how the concept was received (or transformed) in American or common law jurisdictions.
The Institutes and Digest citations are the authoritative primary sources on this point. Gaius and Justinian both treat aquae haustus as a species of rural predial servitude — a category that also included *iter* (footpath), *actus* (right to drive animals), and *via* (road). The civilian tradition consistently classified these servitudes as real rights, not personal privileges, meaning they were inseparable from the dominant tenement. Later civilians, including Domat and Pothier, elaborated on these categories in works that influenced early American civil law states.
Historical dictionaries do not substantially disagree on the core meaning. The limitation of the Black's entry is its brevity: it identifies the right but does not explain the practical conditions — e.g., that the servitude typically included an implied right of access sufficient to actually reach the water source, or that the extent of drawing rights could be fixed by the grant. Researchers needing that level of detail must go to the Digest commentary directly or to civilian treatise literature.
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Jurisdictional Note
In Louisiana, predial servitudes including water-drawing rights remain governed by civilian doctrine under the Louisiana Civil Code, making aquae haustus conceptually operative even if the Latin term itself is rarely used in modern Louisiana practice. In common law states, the functional equivalent is analyzed as an easement appurtenant, with no reference to the Roman servitude framework.
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