Definition
De itinere is a Latin phrase meaning "of the way" or "concerning the right of way." It appears in classical Roman and civil law contexts as a descriptive or qualifying term attached to legal matters involving iter — the right of passage over another's land. The phrase is not a standalone doctrine but a locative descriptor, identifying that a legal question, right, or dispute relates to a way or path.
In practice, de itinere appears most frequently in learned references to Digest titles and civil law treatises dealing with servitudes of passage, particularly those rights that Roman law grouped under the heading of iter (a footpath or personal right of way) as distinct from broader passage rights such as via (a road) or actus (a driving way for livestock).
Why It Matters in Research
De itinere is a phrase researchers encounter almost exclusively in two contexts: (1) citations to the Corpus Juris Civilis, particularly Digest 43.19, which addresses interdicts protecting rights of way; and (2) English and American legal dictionaries and treatises from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that drew heavily on civilian terminology when discussing easements and rights of passage.
The critical navigational point is that de itinere is a qualifier, not a doctrine name. A researcher who encounters it in a historical source should immediately look to the noun it modifies — whether the source is discussing an actio, an interdict, a servitude, or some other legal instrument "of the way." Burrill's entry points directly to iter, and that is the operative term carrying substantive legal content.
Because iter and related way-rights were handled differently in civil law systems than in common law easement doctrine, researchers working in jurisdictions with strong civil law influence (Louisiana, Quebec, mixed jurisdictions, or early American treatises relying on civilian sources) will encounter this vocabulary more frequently. Common law sources absorbed the substance of Roman way-rights into easement doctrine without always preserving the Latin terminology, so a common law case discussing a right of footway will rarely use de itinere, even when the underlying concept is identical.
Researchers should also be alert to the phrase appearing in older indices and digests as a category heading rather than a term of art — meaning its appearance in a table of contents or marginal notation signals subject matter, not a named legal rule.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the entry its full content in a single sentence: "Of way; of the right of way or path," with a cite to Digest 43.19 and a cross-reference to Iter. This brevity is characteristic of Burrill's handling of Latin locatives — he records the translation and the source without elaboration, leaving the doctrinal weight to the primary entry (here, Iter).
No other major historical English law dictionaries (Jacob, Bouvier, Black's early editions) carry a standalone entry for de itinere, which confirms that the phrase was recognized as descriptive rather than constitutive of a legal rule. Its appearance in Burrill reflects his broader practice of cataloguing civil law terminology for American practitioners who might encounter it in treatises or inherited common law materials.
The Digest citation (43.19) is to the title De itinere actuque privato, which addresses the praetorian interdict protecting private rights of passage and driving. This is the primary Roman law source and the anchor for any substantive research into the civil law background of modern easement-of-way doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
De itinere as a term of art is effectively confined to civil law jurisdictions and to historical or comparative legal scholarship. Common law jurisdictions subsumed the relevant concepts into easement doctrine, rendering the Roman vocabulary largely obsolete in practice. Researchers in Louisiana or working with pre-codification Spanish or French land records may find the terminology more operationally relevant.