Definition
A Latin phrase from Roman law meaning "that nothing shall be done" — specifically, that nothing shall be placed or erected — in a public place or public way. It designates the title of a Roman law interdict prohibiting obstruction or encroachment upon public roads and public spaces. The interdict operated as a legal remedy to prevent private parties from interfering with the public's use of common thoroughfares by placing structures, objects, or other impediments within them.
The phrase functions as a procedural and substantive label within the Roman interdiction system, identifying the class of praetorian remedy addressed to the protection of public highways and open spaces from private encroachment.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical legal dictionaries and Roman law scholarship rather than in Anglo-American case law or statute. Researchers encountering it will most often do so in one of three contexts: (1) treatises on Roman civil law discussing the interdict system; (2) comparative legal histories tracing the origins of nuisance doctrine, highway law, or public easement principles back to Roman sources; or (3) older equity scholarship that drew on Roman interdicts when constructing early injunctive relief frameworks.
The practical research trap is treating the term as though it has a direct Anglo-American analog. It does not. While concepts related to this interdict — the public's right to use highways free from obstruction, the state's power to abate encroachments on public ways — are thoroughly embedded in common law through nuisance doctrine and the law of public highways, the Roman interdict itself was never transplanted as a distinct procedural form. Researchers should treat this term as a historical and conceptual ancestor, not a surviving legal mechanism.
The Digest citation (Dig. 43, 8) anchors the term firmly in the Corpus Juris Civilis. Anyone working with original Roman law sources should look to Title 8 of Book 43 of the Digest, which addresses interdicts concerning public places and roads. This is the authoritative primary source behind every dictionary definition of this term.
Researchers interested in the influence of Roman interdicts on equity jurisdiction, particularly the development of injunctions to protect public rights of way, will find this term a useful entry point into that comparative literature, but the analytical weight will be carried by the Roman law scholarship, not by Anglo-American authority.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) provide identical, terse definitions: "That nothing shall be done (put or erected) in a public place or way. The title of an interdict in the Roman law. Dig. 43, 8." Neither edition elaborates on the procedural mechanics of the interdict, the class of parties who could invoke it, or the penalties for violation. Both editions are purely descriptive rather than analytical.
No significant divergence exists between the two editions, which reflects the stability of the term — it was not a living doctrine subject to evolution in common law jurisdictions, and so there was nothing new to report between editions. The brevity of both entries is itself informative: the compilers treated this as a reference term for Roman law completeness rather than as a concept requiring practical guidance for American practitioners.
What the historical dictionaries omit is any discussion of the broader interdict system within which this remedy sat, the praetorian mechanisms by which it was issued and enforced, or its relationship to neighboring interdicts in Digest Book 43 addressing public rivers, roads, and monuments. Researchers requiring that context must go beyond Black's to Romanist sources.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Public Ways and Rights of Way (Roman and Common Law Origins); Interdicts (Roman Law).
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