Definition
A term from Spanish law denoting pasture or the right of pasture — that is, the legally recognized right to graze livestock on a particular tract of land. Pasto functioned as a property interest attached either to land or to persons, governing the use of grazing grounds in territories governed by Spanish civil law. The concept is functionally analogous to the common law easement of pasture or common of pasture, though it arose within a distinct legal tradition and was governed by the Spanish Recopilación rather than common law doctrine.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Pasto" does not appear as an English word. In Spanish, it means grass, pasture, or fodder — the physical substance on which animals graze.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry.
Editorial note: The word enters Anglo-American legal sources exclusively as a term of art imported from Spanish law. Researchers encountering it in English-language legal texts should treat it as a Spanish legal term, not an English word with an independent common meaning. Its appearance signals a Spanish-law context — typically lands formerly under Spanish jurisdiction.
Why It Matters in Research
Pasto surfaces in legal sources tied to territories that were once under Spanish colonial or civil law governance — principally Florida, Louisiana, Texas, California, New Mexico, and other areas of the American Southwest. Researchers working in land grant disputes, property records, or title litigation from these regions may encounter pasto as a claimed right in original Spanish or Mexican land grants. In that context, it functions not merely as a description of land use but as a cognizable legal interest that could be conveyed, reserved, or disputed.
The critical research trap is conflating pasto with simple factual descriptions of grazing land. In Spanish law sources and early territorial court records, pasto denotes a right — a legal entitlement — not merely the physical condition of the land. A document reserving pasto to a grantor, for example, is retaining a property interest, not merely describing the landscape.
Researchers using Law Mind's corpus should also note that pasto appears cross-referenced to the Recopilación de las Leyes de Indias (the Spanish colonial law compilation) and to White's New Recopilation — a key English-language synthesis of Spanish law frequently cited in American territorial and federal courts adjudicating Spanish land grants. Tracking citations to White's New Recopilation in the corpus will surface the broader doctrinal environment in which pasto operated.
Connection to common law property doctrine is loose but useful for orientation: pasto resembles a profit à prendre in that it grants the right to take something (the benefit of grazing) from another's land, but it is not identical. Researchers should resist mapping Spanish law categories onto common law equivalents without care, as courts adjudicating old Spanish grants sometimes struggled with exactly this translation problem.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (both editions) and Burrill's — agree on the essential definition: pasto means feeding, pasture, and the right of pasture under Spanish law. Burrill adds the Latin root (pastus), which is useful for researchers tracing the term through Latin-inflected legal sources or ecclesiastical records involving grazing rights.
All three dictionaries cite White's New Recopilation at the same location (book 2, title 1, chapter 6, section 4), which gives researchers a precise entry point into the primary Spanish law authority as synthesized for American legal practice. Black's first edition abbreviates the citation slightly; the second edition and Burrill's are more complete. None of the three dictionaries expand meaningfully beyond the definitional core or situate pasto within broader Spanish property law doctrine — a gap that Law Mind's encyclopedia resources can help fill for researchers needing that context.
Jurisdictional Note
Pasto is relevant primarily in U.S. jurisdictions that adjudicated Spanish and Mexican land grants after territorial acquisition — particularly federal courts and the courts of Florida, Louisiana, Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. It has no recognized role in common law jurisdictions without a Spanish law history. The analogous common law concept is the profit à prendre or common of pasture.