Definition
FERA has two distinct legal meanings that operate in entirely separate areas of law and history:
1. Federal Emergency Relief Administration (modern administrative law / New Deal history). FERA was a U.S. federal agency created in 1933 under the Federal Emergency Relief Act, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It provided direct federal grants to states for unemployment relief during the Great Depression — the first time the federal government directly funded relief efforts at the state level. FERA was administered by Harry Hopkins and preceded the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It was disbanded in 1935 as relief functions shifted to successor agencies.
2. Fera (civil and common law, historical). In Roman and civil law, fera means "wild." The term appears most prominently in the phrase ferae naturae ("of a wild nature"), a classification of animals that are naturally untamed and undomesticated. Under this doctrine, wild animals are not subject to private ownership while at liberty; property rights attach only upon capture and possession.
Common Confusion
The two meanings of FERA share only their label. Researchers encountering the term in pre-20th-century legal materials — particularly property law, trespass, and game law sources — are dealing with the Latin civil law term, not the New Deal agency. Conversely, FERA in 20th-century administrative, legislative, and social welfare contexts refers exclusively to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Conflating the two is unlikely in practice but possible when searching undifferentiated full-text corpora. A search for "FERA" in an unfiltered corpus will return both sets of materials indiscriminately.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Ferae naturae. The principal legal form of the Latin term. Animals classified as ferae naturae include deer, foxes, hares, wild geese, swans, bees, and fish — those naturally inclined to roam freely and resist domestication. The classification governs the rules of acquisition, ownership, and trespass applicable to wild animals under common law property doctrine.
Domitae naturae. The contrasting classification. Animals of a tame and domestic nature — horses, cattle, dogs — over which property rights attach without the requirement of continuous possession. Burrill pairs the two terms expressly.
Why It Matters in Research
For property law and historical common law research: ferae naturae is a foundational doctrine in Anglo-American property theory. It appears in cases involving hunting rights, trespass, the rule of capture, and riparian game disputes. Researchers tracing this doctrine should follow it through civil law sources (Digest 41.1) into Bracton, Blackstone's Commentaries (Book II), and 19th-century American case law on wild animals and capture. The doctrine also connects directly to modern disputes over oil and gas (the rule of capture in extractive resources is a descendant of ferae naturae reasoning) and to public trust doctrine arguments over wildlife.
For 20th-century legal history and administrative law research: FERA as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration is significant as the first federal direct-relief program and as a structural predecessor to modern federal-state grant-in-aid arrangements. Researchers studying New Deal constitutionalism, the expansion of federal spending power, or the administrative state should distinguish FERA from overlapping contemporaneous agencies — the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the later WPA. These agencies are frequently conflated in secondary literature, and their enabling statutes and administrative histories differ. FERA was explicitly a grants program, not a federal employment program — a legally and politically significant distinction at the time.
Corpus trap: full-text searches for "FERA" in Law Mind without date filtering will surface both the Latin term in property and civil law materials and the administrative agency in 20th-century sources. Filter by date range and subject area before drawing conclusions about frequency or usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats fera in its Latin civil law sense only, giving the core definition ("wild") and its appearance in the Digest at 41.1.5.2 and 41.1.5.5. Burrill also entries ferae naturae as a separate term, pairing it expressly against domitae naturae and cataloguing the canonical examples of wild animals (deer, foxes, hares, pigeons, wild geese, swans, bees, fish). This reflects the standard treatment across 19th-century Anglo-American legal dictionaries: the term is a property-law classification term, not independently significant.
Burrill does not address the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, as the dictionary predates the New Deal by many decades. No 19th-century legal dictionary source would cover that meaning. Researchers using historical dictionaries for this term will find only the civil law definition; the administrative meaning requires 20th-century sources entirely.
What the historical dictionaries miss: the downstream influence of ferae naturae on American extractive resource law — oil, gas, groundwater — where courts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries borrowed the rule of capture framework directly from wild animal property doctrine. That connection is absent from Burrill and its contemporaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The ferae naturae doctrine was received into American common law from English common law but has been significantly modified by state wildlife statutes, which in most U.S. jurisdictions vest ownership of wild animals in the state rather than in private individuals upon capture. The civil law classification retains doctrinal relevance primarily in property theory and in extractive resource law, where the rule of capture remains operative in most oil and gas jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — New Deal Administrative Agencies
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Wild Animals and Property Rights
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Rule of Capture (Property Law)