Definition
Latin: "on the journey" or "in the course of travel." The phrase carries two distinct uses in legal contexts:
1. Historical procedural use: In old English law, justices in itinere (also called justices in eyre) were royal judges who traveled a circuit through the kingdom, typically once every seven years, to hear causes and exercise royal jurisdiction in the counties. The itinerant system was a mechanism for extending centralized royal justice to the localities before a permanent court structure was fully established.
2. Commercial and admiralty use: In the course of transportation; on the way; not yet delivered to the buyer or consignee. In this sense, in itinere is functionally equivalent to in transitu and describes goods that remain in transit — still in the possession or control of a carrier rather than in the hands of the person to whom they are destined.
Common Confusion
The two uses of in itinere are historically unrelated in purpose and should not be conflated. The first is a procedural-historical term describing a system of itinerant royal judges. The second is a commercial and admiralty term describing the status of goods in transit. Both appear in older legal materials under the same Latin phrase, and both survive in secondary literature about very different areas of law. Researchers encountering in itinere must identify the context — court history versus commercial or admiralty law — before applying the definition.
In itinere (sense 2) is treated as interchangeable with in transitu in most historical sources. The practical difference, if any, is stylistic rather than substantive: in transitu is more common in commercial law writing, while in itinere appears more frequently in admiralty contexts, as reflected in Burrill's citation to Sir William Scott's admiralty opinion in The Vrow Margaretha.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter in itinere in two completely separate areas of the Law Mind corpus, and misidentifying the operative sense can send research in the wrong direction.
In constitutional and legal history materials, in itinere signals discussion of the eyre system — one of the foundational mechanisms of English judicial administration. The justices in itinere are a precursor to the assize system and later circuit courts. Sources treating this use date primarily from medieval and early modern English legal history and rely heavily on Blackstone (3 Bl. Comm. 58) and the Year Books. Cross-referencing with eyre, assize, and justices in eyre is essential.
In commercial, maritime, and admiralty materials, in itinere signals discussion of the unpaid seller's right of stoppage in transitu — the right to halt delivery of goods while they remain in the carrier's hands and redirect them before they reach an insolvent buyer. Here, in itinere and in transitu are used interchangeably in older treatises and admiralty opinions. Burrill's citation to The Vrow Margaretha places this usage squarely in British admiralty practice. Researchers working in this area should note that modern commercial law has largely displaced the Latin terminology; the Uniform Commercial Code and its equivalents use plain-English formulations, so in itinere in this sense is primarily a historical research term rather than a live term of art.
There is also a workers' compensation usage that emerged in the twentieth century — the "going and coming rule" and its exceptions use the concept of an employee being in itinere (in the course of travel) to determine whether an injury falls within the scope of employment. This usage does not appear in the historical dictionaries surveyed here but is encountered frequently in twentieth-century American case law and should be recognized as a third distinct application.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) are essentially identical on this term, covering both the eyre usage and the commercial usage and explicitly equating the second with in transitu. Burrill takes a narrower approach, treating in itinere solely as a maritime/admiralty term meaning "on the voyage" and citing Sir William Scott's opinion in The Vrow Margaretha (1 Rob. Adm. R. 338) as authority. The divergence is instructive: Black's reflects broader common law coverage while Burrill's reflects an admiralty specialist's perspective.
None of the surveyed sources address the workers' compensation usage, which developed after these dictionaries were compiled. This is a notable gap for twentieth- and twenty-first-century researchers who encounter the term in employment injury contexts.
Jurisdictional Note
The eyre usage is exclusively English legal history and has no direct American counterpart. The commercial/admiralty sense of in itinere was absorbed into American law through reception of English common law and admiralty precedent and is essentially uniform across jurisdictions, though the Latin phrase itself has been superseded by modern statutory terminology in commercial law.