Definition
Jus falcandi is a Latin term from old English law meaning the right of mowing or cutting. It describes a type of incorporeal right — a profit à prendre or similar servitude — entitling the holder to enter another's land and cut grass, hay, reeds, or similar vegetation. The right was typically appurtenant to a dominant tenement or held in gross, and its exercise was governed by the terms under which it was granted or recognized.
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Why It Matters in Research
Jus falcandi appears almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources and in the Latin-heavy dictionaries that catalogued those sources. Researchers encountering the term in old pleadings, conveyances, or treatises should treat it as a specific instance within the broader category of profits à prendre — rights to take something from another's land — rather than as a freestanding doctrine with an independent modern life.
The term has no meaningful presence in post-medieval case law under this Latin name. Modern disputes over hay-cutting rights, mowing easements, or similar interests will be litigated under the vocabulary of easements, profits, or agricultural tenancy law. If you are working backward from a modern dispute to historical origins, this term may surface in the chain of title or in older conveyancing instruments; if you are working forward from a medieval source, you will need to translate the concept into its modern common-law equivalent.
Cross-reference with related rights of common — particularly common of estovers (right to take wood) and common of pasture — as these frequently appear alongside jus falcandi in the same instruments and in the same sections of medieval treatises. The Fleta citation given in every historical dictionary points to a late-thirteenth-century English legal treatise, which situates this term firmly in the classical common-law period before the rationalization of property doctrine.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: all three define jus falcandi identically as "the right of mowing or cutting" and all three cite the same source — Fleta, lib. 4, c. 27, § 1. The uniformity is unsurprising given that Burrill and the successive editions of Black's were drawing on the same stratum of Latin legal terminology preserved in medieval treatises.
None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on the practical operation of the right, its relationship to the broader law of profits à prendre, or how disputes over it were resolved. The entries function as glossary items rather than substantive doctrinal treatments. A researcher seeking depth will need to go beyond these dictionaries to Fleta itself and to secondary treatments of medieval English land law — the dictionaries merely flag the term's existence and its Latin sense.
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Jurisdictional Note
Jus falcandi is a term of old English law with no recognized modern counterpart in U.S. jurisdictions under this name. In England and Wales, the underlying concept survives within the law of profits à prendre. American researchers are unlikely to encounter the term except in historical documents or scholarship on English legal history.
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