Definition
Ex commodato is a Latin phrase meaning "from or out of loan." In the old law of England, it designated a right of action arising out of a commodatum — a gratuitous loan of a movable thing for use, to be returned in kind after the use is complete. The phrase identifies the source or ground of the action: the obligation created by the lending relationship itself, rather than by contract in the modern sense.
The commodatum was a species of bailment in Roman and early English law. The borrower received the use of a thing without payment, and the lender retained ownership. An action ex commodato was the lender's remedy to recover the thing, or its value, if the borrower failed to return it or misused it. The phrase functions as a term of art for the category of claim, not for any particular procedural writ.
Common Confusion
Ex commodato is sometimes loosely grouped with other Latin action-phrases from Roman law — ex mutuo (from loan of money, i.e., a simple money loan), ex deposito (from deposit), ex locato (from hire) — as if they were interchangeable. They are not. The critical distinction is that commodatum involves a gratuitous loan of a non-fungible thing for use, while mutuum involves a loan of fungible goods (typically money or grain) that passes ownership and requires return of equivalent goods, not the same thing. An action ex mutuo was therefore quite different in its elements and theory from one ex commodato. Researchers encountering either term in historical sources should resist collapsing them into a generic "loan action."
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — primarily medieval and early common law texts engaging with Roman and civil law categories. It is not a living term of art in any modern common law jurisdiction. Researchers will encounter it principally when:
Working with Glanvill or Reeve. The primary references in all three historical dictionaries point to Glanvill's Tractatus de Legibus (lib. 10, c. 13) and Reeve's History of English Law. These are foundational secondary sources for early common law. Ex commodato signals that a passage is engaging with the Roman-derived classification of obligations rather than indigenous common law forms of action.
Tracing the relationship between Roman law and early English law. The commodatum concept traveled into English legal thinking through canon law and civilian influence. Encountering ex commodato in a source is a marker that the author is thinking in civilian categories, which can be significant for understanding the intellectual tradition a text belongs to.
Distinguishing from modern bailment law. Modern common law absorbed and transformed the Roman categories. What Roman law called a commodatum survives in bailment doctrine, but the phrase ex commodato itself dropped out of use. A researcher seeing "commodatum" or "ex commodato" in a nineteenth-century source should treat it as a learned or historical reference, not a description of a recognized cause of action in that jurisdiction's courts.
Corpus navigation note: Because the term is obsolete and narrowly sourced, searches within the Law Mind corpus for ex commodato will likely return only entries in historical dictionaries and texts engaging with Roman-derived classification schemes. Searchers interested in the underlying legal relationship should expand their search to commodatum, bailment, and gratuitous loan.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three dictionary sources — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's — are in complete agreement, both on definition and on authority. All three cite Glanvill lib. 10, c. 13 and Reeve's History of English Law as the foundational references, and all three define the phrase identically as "from or out of loan," with the parenthetical clarification "(commodatum)" to distinguish this type of loan from others.
The entries are brief by design: the term carries almost no technical content independent of the underlying concept of commodatum. The dictionaries are not defining a procedural mechanism or a living writ — they are glossing a Latin phrase that appears in historical sources. What the historical dictionaries do not do is explain the Roman law background of commodatum in any depth, or trace how the action ex commodato did or did not integrate into common law forms. Researchers seeking that context will need to go beyond the dictionary entries to the primary sources the dictionaries cite.
Burrill's entry is marginally more precise in referring to "Reeves' Hist." (using the possessive), but the substance is identical across all three.
Jurisdictional Note
Ex commodato has no current operative meaning in any common law jurisdiction. It belongs to the historical vocabulary of early English law as shaped by Roman and civilian influence. Modern questions about rights arising from gratuitous loans of personal property are addressed under bailment law, which varies by jurisdiction but does not use this terminology.