Definition
Jus hauriendi is a Latin term from Roman and old English law meaning the right to draw water from another's land or water source. It is a form of easement — specifically, a servitude — granting the holder the legal entitlement to take water from a well, spring, stream, or other water source situated on property belonging to another person. The right runs with the dominant tenement and imposes a corresponding burden on the servient tenement.
As a water right, jus hauriendi belongs to the broader family of praedial servitudes in civil law tradition, and functions similarly to an easement appurtenant in common law systems. The right is passive in the sense that it does not entitle the holder to control the source but only to take from it — the quantity, manner, and frequency of drawing may be defined or limited by the instrument creating the right.
Common Confusion
Jus hauriendi is sometimes loosely grouped with jus aquaeductus, the right to conduct water across another's land through channels or pipes. These are distinct servitudes. Jus hauriendi is the right to draw or take water at the source; jus aquaeductus is the right to transport water over or through the servient land. A party might hold one without the other, and historical instruments or legal descriptions that use the terms interchangeably should be read carefully.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in civil law materials, Roman law treatises, and early English legal texts. Researchers will encounter it primarily when working with sources predating the consolidation of modern water rights doctrine — particularly in Louisiana (which retains a civil law tradition), in historical English property cases drawing on Roman sources, and in Scottish and South African legal literature where civil law servitude frameworks remain operative.
When tracing water rights in historical deed records or old equity proceedings, jus hauriendi may appear without further elaboration, relying on the reader's familiarity with its civil law content. Modern common law jurisdictions have largely absorbed this concept into general easement law without using the Latin term, meaning that functionally equivalent rights may appear under different labels in common law jurisdictions and in different form entirely in western states governed by prior appropriation doctrine.
The Fleta citation (lib. 4, c. 27, § 1) that all three source dictionaries reference is a medieval English legal treatise compiled around 1290, situating this right firmly in the medieval reception of Roman law into English practice. Researchers using this term as a search term in corpus materials should expect it to appear in Romanist, civilian, and antiquarian legal writing far more than in modern case law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — both editions of Black's and Burrill's — give materially identical definitions: "the right of drawing water," attributed to civil and old English law, with uniform citation to Fleta, lib. 4, c. 27, § 1. There is no meaningful divergence among the sources on substance. This uniformity reflects the term's stable, technical character: it was never a contested concept in legal dictionaries, merely a fixture of civilian terminology carried into English legal writing through medieval synthesis.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural or remedial content of the right — how it was created, what limits applied, and what remedy lay for its interference. Those questions were answered by the broader law of servitudes and easements in each respective system. Researchers seeking that content will need to move beyond the dictionary entries to civilian treatises on servitudes or, for English law, to the equity and real property literature.
Jurisdictional Note
The term retains most practical relevance in Louisiana and in jurisdictions whose water or property law draws on the civil law tradition. In common law states, the underlying right exists but travels under the vocabulary of easements and water rights rather than civilian servitude terminology. Prior appropriation jurisdictions (most of the American West) organize water rights on an entirely different framework in which this term is largely inapplicable.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Easements and Servitudes; Water Rights — Historical Frameworks.