PASSAGE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PASSAGEAuthored

The Law Mind • 1105 words

Definition

PASSAGE carries distinct meanings in law depending on context. The three principal legal uses are:

1. Right of way over water. An easement or servitude granting the holder the right to pass over a body of private water. Analogous to a right-of-way easement over land, but specifically limited to aquatic passage. The right may be appurtenant to land or held in gross, depending on the instrument creating it.

2. Maritime and carriage law. The transport of a person by vessel, together with the contract and fare governing that transport. "Passage" in this sense encompasses the voyage itself, the agreement between passenger and carrier, and the money paid — often called passage money. Admiralty law treats the passage contract as distinct from a contract of affreightment (which governs cargo), though the two may exist on the same vessel.

3. Legislative enactment. The formal act by which a legislative or deliberative body approves a bill, resolution, or other measure according to prescribed procedural requirements. Passage converts a proposed measure into law (or into a posture ready for executive action). This meaning is procedural: it refers to the moment and method of approval, not simply the content of what was approved.

A fourth, more general use — a section or excerpt of a document or text — appears in legal writing as ordinary usage rather than as a term of art.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To pass something through a host or medium; or, to make a crossing, especially by sea.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of passing; transit from one place to another — by person, carriage, ship, or fluid — including journey by water and the conveyance fare paid for it.

The common and legal meanings overlap substantially in the maritime sense but diverge in two important directions. In law, passage as an easement is a technical property right with specific formal requirements, entirely absent from ordinary English. In legislative usage, passage is a procedural term of art describing the constitutional and procedural moment of approval — a meaning that common usage approximates but does not precisely capture.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Passage money: The fare or compensation paid by a passenger for carriage by sea. Historically treated as a separate claim in admiralty, distinct from freight.

Passage home: A specific statutory obligation in merchant shipping law. A seaman was entitled to passage back to a home port upon the conclusion of a foreign voyage. Courts construed "passage home" liberally, holding that delivery to any port within the seaman's home country could satisfy the obligation depending on the governing statute.

Right of passage: The property law form — an easement over water. Distinct from a public navigational right, which arises by operation of law over navigable waters.

Why It Matters in Research

Disambiguation is the central challenge. A researcher encountering "passage" in a historical source must determine from context which of the three legal meanings is operative. The word appears without differentiation in statutes, admiralty cases, property deeds, and legislative procedure manuals, and failure to identify the controlling sense leads to misreading.

In legislative history research, the precise moment of "passage" matters for determining effective dates, amendment cut-offs, and constitutional compliance. Some constitutional provisions attach consequences to the passage of a bill before presidential or gubernatorial action; others attach to enactment, which is a later step. Conflating passage with enactment is a recurring error in both brief-writing and historical analysis.

In maritime sources, passage and passage money appear frequently in nineteenth-century admiralty decisions and merchant shipping statutes. The rights of seamen to passage home were heavily litigated under successive versions of British merchant shipping legislation; American courts interpreted analogous provisions differently. Researchers using British admiralty reporters as persuasive authority in American admiralty matters should note the statutory divergence.

The easement meaning is encountered most often in older conveyancing instruments, particularly in jurisdictions with tidal or inland waterway access disputes. It rarely appears in modern statutory codification under this label, having been absorbed into broader easement and riparian rights frameworks.

In commercial law, the phrase "passage of title" — while derived from the same root — is a distinct term of art under UCC Article 2 governing when ownership of goods transfers from seller to buyer. This usage is not covered by any of the historical dictionary definitions here and represents a twentieth-century development. Researchers should not read historical passage-as-easement or passage-as-maritime-transport cases into UCC title-passage analysis.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both first and second editions) and Bouvier's are in close agreement on the three core meanings: the water easement, the maritime transport/fare sense, and the legislative enactment sense. Their formulations are nearly identical, suggesting that by the late nineteenth century these meanings were settled and uncontroversial in American legal usage.

Bouvier adds a notable doctrinal gloss in the merchant shipping context: a seaman delivered to any port within the United Kingdom — even one different from his original port of embarkation — was held to have been provided with a "passage home" within the meaning of the applicable Merchant Shipping Act. This illustrates that courts gave the term a practical rather than literal construction in the seaman's-rights context.

Rapalje & Lawrence, as presented in the source material, does not appear to contain a direct entry for PASSAGE; the excerpted material addresses Latin maxims (parum…) and is likely a misfiled or adjacently indexed entry. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for this term should verify that no substantive entry appears under a different heading.

None of the historical dictionaries address the modern commercial law sense of passage of title as developed under the UCC — an expected gap given their pre-Code publication dates.

Jurisdictional Note

In American admiralty law, the seaman's right to passage home is governed by federal statute (historically the Merchant Seamen's Act and its successors) and interpreted under federal admiralty jurisdiction. State law plays no role. In property law, the water-passage easement is governed by state law, and its creation, scope, and transferability vary significantly across jurisdictions, particularly between common law states and those with civil law influence.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

UCC Article 2 — Passage of Title (§2-401), The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia

PASSAGEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A way over water; an ease- ment giving the right to pass over a piece of private water. Travel by sea; a voyage over water; the carriage of passengers by water; money paid for such carriage. Enactment; the act of carrying a bill or resolution through a legislative or deliber- ative body in accordance with the prescribed forms and requisites; the emergence of the bill in the form of a law, or the motion in the form of a resolution.

PASSAGEmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

A way over water; an easement giving the right to pass over a piece of private water. Travel by sea; a voyage over water; the carriage of passengers by water; money paid for such carriage. Enactment; the act of carrying a bill or resolution through a legislative or deliberative body in accordance with the prescribed forms and requisites; the emergence of the bill in the form of a law, or the motion in the form of a resolution.

PASSAGEmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

(935) PARUM.-Little; but little. Parum differunt quæ re concordant (2 Bulst. 86): Things which agree in substance differ but little. Parum est latam esse sententiam nisi mandetur executioni (Co. Litt. 289): It is not enough that sentence be given unless it be ordered into execution. Parum proficit scire quid fieri debet, si non cognoscas quomodo sit facturum (2 Inst. 503): It profits little to know what ought to be done, if you do not know how it is to be done. PARVA SERJANTIA.-Petty serjeanty (q. v.) - (1) The easement of passing over a piece of private water, (936) average. (Abb. Sh. 3, c. x.)-Wharton. 22. Liability of carrier.-Unless where any particular passenger travels with a free pass or otherwise "at his own risk," (McCawley v. Furness Ry. Co., L. R. 8 Q. B. 57,) the carrier (whether person or company) is liable for negligence or un-

PASSAGEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The act of passing; transit from one place to another; movement from point to point; a going by, over, across, or through; as, the passage of a man or a carriage; the passage of a ship or a bird; the passage of light; the passage of fluids through the pores or channels of the body. What! are my doors opposed against my passage! Shak. Transit by means of conveyance; journey, as by water, carriage, car, or the like; travel; right, liberty, or means, of passing; conveyance. The ship in which he had taken passage. Macaulay. Price paid for the liberty to pass; fare; as, to pay one's passage. Removal from life; decease; departure; death. [R.] "Endure thy mortal passage." Milton. When he is fit and season'd for his passage. Shak. Way; road; path; channel or course through or by which one passes; way of exit or entrance; way of access or transit. Hence, a common avenue to various apartments in a building; a hall; a corridor. And with his pointed dart Explores the nearest passage to his heart. Dryden. The Persian army had advanced into the . . . passages of Cilicia. South. A continuous course, process, or progress; a connected or continuous series; as, the passage of time. The conduct and passage of affairs. Sir J. Davies. The passage and whole carriage of this action. Shak. A separate part of a course, process, or series; an occurrence; an incident; an act or deed. "In thy passages of life." Shak. The . . . almost incredible passage of their unbelief. South. A particular portion constituting a part of something continuous; esp., a portion of a book, speech, or musical composition; a paragraph; a clause. How commentators each dark passage shun. Young. Reception; currency. [Obs.] Sir K. Digby. A pass or en encounter; as, a passage at arms. No passages of love Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore. Tennyson. A movement or an evacuation of the bowels. In parliamentary proceedings: (a) The course of a proposition (bill, resolution, etc.) through the several stages of consideration and action; as, during its passage through Congress the bill was amended in both Houses. (b) The advancement of a bill or other proposition from one stage to another by an affirmative vote; esp., the final affirmative action of the body upon a proposition; hence, adoption; enactment; as, the passage of the bill to its third reading was delayed. "The passage of the Stamp Act." D. Hosack. The final question was then put upon its passage. Cushing. In passage, in passing; cursorily. "These . . . have been studied but in passage." Bacon.  -- Middle passage, Northeast passage, Northwest passage. See under Middle, Northeast, etc.  -- Of passage, passing from one place, region, or climate, to another; migratory; -- said especially of birds "Birds of passage." Longfellow.  -- Passage hawk, a hawk taken on its passage or migration.  -- Passage money, money paid for conveyance of a passenger, -- usually for carrying passengers by water.

passageverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

To pass something, such as a pathogen or stem cell, through a host or medium. | To make a passage, especially by sea; to cross.

passagenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

A movement in classical dressage, in which the horse performs a very collected, energetic, and elevated trot that has a longer period of suspension between each foot fall than a working trot.

Passagename

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Ellipsis of Passage West, Ireland.

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