Definition
In law, *nostrum* is a Latin term meaning "ours" or "our own." It appears in legal maxims and Roman law texts to express the principle of ownership — specifically, that a thing belonging to a person cannot be transferred to another without that person's act or consent. The term derives from the first-person plural possessive pronoun and functions as a shorthand signal in maxims about property and alienation.
The operative maxim is: *Id quod nostrum est, sine facto nostro, ad alium transferri non potest* — "That which is ours cannot, without our act, be transferred to another." This principle underlies foundational concepts in property law: ownership does not pass involuntarily except through recognized legal mechanisms (such as operation of law, judicial process, or conquest), and a grantor cannot convey better title than they possess.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A medicine or remedy in conventional use that has not been proven to have any desirable medical effects; loosely, an ineffective but favored remedy for a problem, especially in political contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A medicine whose ingredients are kept secret to restrict profits to the inventor or proprietor; a quack medicine; any scheme or device proposed by a quack.
The legal and common meanings share the same Latin root but have traveled in entirely different directions. In common English, *nostrum* is almost exclusively associated with quack remedies and dubious cure-alls — the patent medicine tradition. In legal Latin, *nostrum* is a clean possessive pronoun appearing in property maxims, carrying no connotation of fraud or secrecy. A researcher encountering *nostrum* in a legal text should not import any of the common-language baggage; the word is doing simple grammatical work, not signaling anything suspicious.
Common Confusion
The common-English sense of *nostrum* (quack remedy, secret patent medicine) has created confusion when legal historians or non-specialists encounter the word in maxim-dense texts. Because 18th- and 19th-century legal writing sometimes addressed patent medicine regulation under the rubric of "nostrums" — meaning the commercial product, not the Latin possessive — the two usages can appear in close proximity in the same period's literature. Researchers must determine from context whether *nostrum* is functioning as a Latin possessive pronoun in a property maxim or as an English noun describing a proprietary remedy.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter *nostrum* in one of two distinct contexts, and conflating them will produce errors.
First, in maxim collections and Roman law commentaries, *nostrum* appears as a grammatical component of property maxims, particularly those dealing with voluntary alienation and nemo dat principles. Burrill cites the Digest directly (Dig. 50.17.11), and researchers working with civil law sources, mixed jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, South Africa), or early common law treatises that drew on Roman sources will encounter this usage. The maxim *id quod nostrum est* is foundational to understanding why involuntary transfer doctrines require specific legal authorization.
Second, in 19th-century regulatory history and early food-and-drug law research, *nostrum* appears as a period term for proprietary or patent medicines — an English-language usage entirely disconnected from the Latin possessive. Legislative debates, early Pure Food and Drug Act materials, and contemporary medical reform literature use *nostrum* in this commercial sense. A corpus search for *nostrum* in Law Mind sources spanning this period will return both usages, and the researcher must sort them by context.
The term itself is not a standalone legal doctrine or cause of action. Its research value is as a key to the maxim it anchors and as a period marker in regulatory history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats *nostrum* as a straightforward Latin entry, providing the translation ("ours; our own") and the operative maxim with a Digest citation. Burrill does not editorialize on the common-language sense. This is consistent with the approach of most classical law dictionaries of the period, which treated Latin possessives appearing in maxims as vocabulary items requiring translation rather than extended commentary.
What historical legal dictionaries largely miss: the collision between the Latin legal term and the contemporaneously developing English commercial usage. By the mid-19th century, *nostrum* as "quack remedy" was in wide circulation in the same publishing environment as legal maxim collections, but lexicographers kept the two meanings siloed. Modern researchers working across legal and regulatory history do not have that luxury and must be alert to the overlap.
The Digest citation (Dig. 50.17.11) is authentic. Justinian's Digest, Book 50, Title 17 is the *de diversis regulis juris antiqui* — the collection of ancient legal rules — and the maxim appears there in the classical Roman juristic tradition. This anchors *nostrum* firmly in the civil law canon.
Jurisdictional Note
The maxim *id quod nostrum est* carries greater operative weight in civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed systems) where Roman law maxims retain direct doctrinal relevance. In common law jurisdictions, the maxim is cited for illustrative or rhetorical purposes but is not itself a source of law; the underlying principle is absorbed into nemo dat and voluntary alienation doctrine.