Definition
Per mitter le droit (Law French: "by passing the right") is a common law doctrine describing one of the recognized modes by which a release could operate to perfect title. Specifically, it applied where a person who had been disseised — that is, wrongfully dispossessed of land — chose to release their right to the disseisor, the disseisor's heir, or a feoffee taking from the disseisor. The release did not convey possession, which the releasee already held; instead, it transferred the releasor's outstanding legal right and merged it with the existing possession. The union of right and possession produced a complete, indefeasible estate in the releasee.
The operative logic is one of merger rather than transfer: the releasor held a right without possession; the releasee held possession without a clean right. The release fused the two, eliminating the releasor's ability to bring an action to recover the land and confirming the releasee's title.
Per mitter le droit is distinguished from per mitter le possession, the other principal mode, which operated to transfer possession itself rather than to pass a pre-existing right onto an already-established possessory interest.
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Common Confusion
Per mitter le droit is frequently paired with — and confused with — per mitter le possession. The distinction is structural: per mitter le droit presupposes a divided estate where right and possession are already separated, and the release works by adding the right to an existing possession. Per mitter le possession operates where the releasor holds both right and possession and conveys that possession to another. Researchers encountering either term in a historical source should identify which element — right or possession — was being transferred, as the two modes rested on entirely different conditions of valid operation and different categories of eligible releasees.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the historical common law of real property conveyancing and will appear almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century sources — English treatises, early American equity and law reports, and digests of real property doctrine. It surfaces most often in the context of explaining why a release succeeded or failed to perfect title, and why certain parties (such as strangers to the possession) could not take by release at all under this mode.
Researchers should be aware of two traps. First, the term is Law French and appears in various spellings across historical sources — mitter, mittre, mettre, and combinations thereof — which can complicate full-text searches. Second, the doctrine's practical significance in American law was largely extinguished by recording acts, statutory conveyancing reforms, and the near-universal displacement of the old forms of real property action by the late nineteenth century. Cases citing per mitter le droit in American reports are therefore sparse and tend to be found in mid-nineteenth-century decisions from states that preserved a strong common law property tradition, New York being the most prominent example.
The doctrine connects to the broader historical framework of disseisin, right of entry, and the various common law real actions — a framework that must be understood to make sense of why this distinction between right and possession had operational legal significance. Researchers working in early American land title disputes, particularly those involving chains of title clouded by adverse possession or irregular conveyance, may encounter per mitter le droit as part of a court's analysis of whether a release cured a defect or merely transferred an already-extinguished claim.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines the term concisely and accurately, identifying it as a mode of release operating by addition of the releasor's right to the releasee's possession. The entry cites Miller v. Emans, 19 N.Y. 387, which provides a concrete judicial application.
Black's treatment reflects the standard framing found in English property treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The doctrine is developed at greater length in Coke on Littleton and in Blackstone's Commentaries, where the modes of release are systematically categorized. Black's entry, while accurate, is compressed and will not suffice as a standalone research tool for understanding the conditions and limitations of the doctrine. Notably, the historical dictionaries do not address the doctrine's obsolescence or its relationship to statutory reform — a gap that matters greatly for any researcher trying to determine whether the doctrine had any continuing force in a given American jurisdiction after mid-century conveyancing reforms.
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Jurisdictional Note
Per mitter le droit as a live doctrine was effectively absorbed or displaced in most American jurisdictions by the mid-to-late nineteenth century as statutory quitclaim deeds replaced the old common law release and as real property actions were reformed. Its appearance in case law beyond that period is almost entirely historical or interpretive — courts explaining what a prior conveyance had accomplished, not applying the doctrine to contemporary transactions.
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