Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "of watercourses" or "concerning streams." In Roman law, *de rivis* identified the body of rules and remedial procedures governing the use, diversion, and obstruction of running water, including natural streams, channels, and irrigation conduits. The phrase most commonly appears as a heading or classification label in the Digest of Justinian (Dig. 43.21), where it designates the title organizing the praetorian interdict that protected rights to draw water from a stream or maintain an established watercourse. As a term of legal art, *de rivis* did not denote a single cause of action or doctrine but rather a category of water law — the legal regime applicable when disputes arose over the flow, diversion, or obstruction of defined watercourses.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions primarily as a finding and classification aid rather than an operative legal concept. Researchers encountering *de rivis* in historical sources should treat it as a pointer to Digest title 43.21 and the surrounding Roman law of interdicts over water. Several navigational points matter:
**Corpus placement.** Burrill's entry is stripped to the minimum — "Of water-courses. Dig. 43.21" — and immediately pivots to adjacent entries (*de salva gardia*, *de salvo conductu*). This is representative: historical English-language law dictionaries treat *de rivis* as a cross-reference anchor rather than a subject for independent elaboration. For substantive doctrine, you must move to the Digest itself or to treatises on Roman water law and its reception into civil law jurisdictions.
**Civil law transmission.** The Roman interdict *de rivis* was received into the civil law tradition and influenced water law in Spain, France, and their colonial successors. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or the legal traditions of Latin American jurisdictions may find the phrase in foundational water law materials precisely because those systems drew directly from the civil law reception of Justinian's Digest. Common law jurisdictions absorbed analogous principles through riparian doctrine but generally did not carry the Roman interdict nomenclature forward.
**Distinction from broader aqua terms.** Roman water law organized interdicts across several Digest titles. Researchers should take care not to conflate *de rivis* (Dig. 43.21, concerning channels and watercourses) with *de aqua* or *aquae pluviae arcendae* (rainwater and surface drainage disputes) or *de fonte* (spring rights). Burrill's placement of *de rivis* in immediate sequence with safe-conduct writs is an artifact of alphabetical organization, not conceptual proximity — those entries share no doctrinal relationship.
**Common law irrelevance.** In pure common law research, *de rivis* has essentially no operative role. Riparian rights in common law jurisdictions developed through equity and common law doctrine without adopting the Roman interdict framework by name. If the phrase appears in a common law source, it is almost certainly being cited for historical or comparative purposes, or as a learned allusion rather than as governing authority.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the shelf sources. The definition is minimal: "Of water-courses. Dig. 43.21." This brevity is consistent with Burrill's treatment of purely classificatory Latin phrases — he supplies the translation and the Roman law cite and does not elaborate. No divergence among sources is possible here because the other shelf dictionaries do not carry this entry. The phrase's meaning is not contested; it is simply narrow. The Digest cite (43.21) is the controlling reference for anyone seeking substantive doctrine, and Burrill's value is precisely in providing that anchor.
What historical dictionaries collectively miss is the broader context of Roman interdict practice: that *de rivis* governed both private disputes between landowners over irrigation channels and questions of public water infrastructure, and that the interdict was available not only to the owner of the dominant estate but also to those with established customary or contractual use rights. This doctrinal texture does not survive the dictionary form.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Operative almost exclusively in civil law and mixed jurisdictions where the Roman law tradition was received directly. In common law jurisdictions, equivalent water rights questions are addressed through riparian doctrine, prior appropriation, or statutory water law without reference to this Roman classification.
---