Definition
De chimino (also rendered de chemino) is a Latin phrase meaning "of the way" or "concerning the way." In English law, it denotes a writ used to enforce a private right of way — that is, a legal proceeding by which a person entitled to pass over another's land could compel recognition and use of that passage when it was obstructed or denied. The writ directed a remedy where the plaintiff's established right of way had been interfered with by the landowner or another party.
The term belongs to a family of old English writs associated with real property and incorporeal hereditaments — rights appurtenant to land that did not themselves involve physical possession of a freehold estate.
Common Language
This section is omitted. De chimino is pure legal Latin with no meaningful counterpart in ordinary modern or historical English usage.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering de chimino in historical sources should treat it as a marker of the old English writ system rather than as a living procedural device. The writ itself is a relic of the forms of action that were formally abolished in England by the Common Law Procedure Acts of the mid-nineteenth century and rendered obsolete in American federal practice even earlier. Its appearance in a document therefore dates that document or the source it quotes to the pre-abolition era.
The principal research trap is conflation with other "way"-related concepts. De chimino addresses enforcement of an already-established right of way; it is not the mechanism by which a right of way was originally claimed or created. A researcher tracing a right-of-way dispute must distinguish between the writ that enforced the right and the underlying doctrine (easement, prescription, dedication) that created it.
Because Black's Law Dictionary in both its first and second editions reproduces the entry nearly word for word — citing only Reg. Orig. 155 (the Registrum Omnium Brevium, a standard English writ register) — there is no substantive evolution in the dictionary treatment of this term. What both editions provide is essentially an antiquarian cross-reference: a pointer to where in the writ registers a practitioner or scholar of the old forms would look.
In American legal research, this writ has no procedural counterpart. Rights of way are enforced today through injunctive relief, actions to quiet title, or declaratory judgment actions. The term de chimino may appear in treatises on English legal history, in comparative law materials, or in early American cases that borrowed the language of English pleading before procedural reform. It will not appear in any modern statutory or procedural context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary (1st Ed.) and Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) define de chimino identically: "A writ for the enforcement of a right of way," citing Reg. Orig. 155. The Registrum Omnium Brevium was a foundational English writ register that compiled the standard forms of original writs; citation to it is characteristically precise and reliable for dating and contextualizing such terms.
Neither edition elaborates on the procedural mechanics of the writ, the courts in which it was issued, or the factual predicates required to obtain it. This brevity is itself informative: de chimino was sufficiently obscure even by the time of the early Black's editions that it warranted only definitional preservation, not practical guidance. Historical sources such as Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium or the older abridgments would be the appropriate resources for a scholar requiring substantive procedural detail about how this writ operated in practice.
No divergence between the two editions exists. The entry is stable and frozen — a dictionary entry that preserves a writ already defunct at the time of publication.
Jurisdictional Note
De chimino is English in origin and has no recognized independent existence in American statutory or common law. Any American appearance of the term is likely in a citation to English authority or in early colonial-era pleading. Researchers should not expect state-by-state variation; the concept is uniformly historical across all U.S. jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses the English writ system or the forms of action. The matched entries (de facto parent doctrine, defective incorporation, standards of appellate review) share a Latin prefix but are conceptually unrelated to de chimino and are omitted here to avoid misleading cross-referencing.