Definition
"Imm" as a standalone legal term does not carry an established or recognized meaning in modern law. The fragment appearing in Burrill's Law Dictionary under this heading is not a substantive entry but rather a bibliographic artifact — a truncated reference appearing in proximity to entries for "Illusory" and related terms, pointing to historical sources including Camden's Britannia, the Laws of Edward the Confessor, and commentary by Cowell and Spelman. No independent legal definition for "Imm" is supported by the available source material.
It is possible the fragment represents a clipped form of a longer term — candidates include "immemorial" (as in time immemorial), "immovable" (as in immovable property), or "immunity" — but the source material does not establish which, if any, of these was intended.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "Imm" in historical legal materials should treat it as an abbreviation or truncated form rather than a freestanding term. Burrill's Law Dictionary, like many nineteenth-century reference works, used abbreviated cross-references and running entries that can appear as independent headwords in digitized or re-typeset editions. A fragment reading "Imm" in a historical source is most likely shorthand for "immemorial," "immunity," "immovable," or occasionally "imminent" — all of which carry significant and distinct legal meanings that vary by jurisdiction and era.
If encountered in a case report, pleading, or statute, context will almost always resolve the abbreviation. If encountered in a secondary source or legal dictionary index, check surrounding entries and any appended abbreviation tables. Older English law dictionaries, including Cowell's Interpreter and Spelman's Glossary (both cited in the Burrill fragment), include their own abbreviation conventions that do not always transfer to American usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
The Burrill source material for this entry is not a substantive legal definition. The text is bibliographic filler — a geographic note referencing counties through which a right or boundary passed (Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire), followed by a citation string: Co. 61a (Coke's Reports), the Bishop of Salisbury's case, Camden's Britannia, the Laws of Edward the Confessor, Cowell, and Spelman. This content belongs to an adjacent entry, most likely one concerning a named franchise, liberty, or ancient right tied to those English counties. The "Imm" heading, as it appears in the digitized source, is almost certainly a scanning or transcription artifact.
No historical legal dictionary in the standard reference corpus — including Black's, Bouvier's, Tomlin's, or Jacob's — carries a substantive entry under "Imm" as an independent term.