Definition
POU is a Latin abbreviation used in historical English legal writing, derived from *potentia* (from *posse*, to be able). It appears in two closely related senses in the older common law authorities:
1. **Possibility.** POU abbreviates *potentia* when writers of digests, abridgments, and case reporters condensed Latin maxims or citations. In this sense it carries the meaning of a legal possibility — a contingent interest or expectancy recognized by law, as distinct from a vested right. Old English property law drew careful distinctions between grades of possibility based on how likely or remote the contingency was.
2. **Power (potentia).** In maxim literature and some older treatises, *potentia* shades into the sense of legal power or capacity — the authority of a person or office to act with legal effect. The maxim *Potentia debet sequi justitiam, non antecedere* (Power ought to follow justice, not precede it) illustrates this usage.
Because the abbreviation is context-dependent, a researcher encountering POU in an older text must determine from context whether the author means possibility (a property-law concept) or power/capacity (a more general legal principle).
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Common Language
**Modern common usage (Wiktionary):** POU as an abbreviation in contemporary English stands for "program organization unit" (software/engineering) or "point of use" (logistics and manufacturing).
**Historical common usage:** Neither Webster's 1913 nor standard Victorian dictionaries treat POU as an English word or recognized abbreviation in general usage. It was a specialized contraction of Latin legal and scholastic vocabulary.
**Editorial note:** A modern researcher encountering POU in a digitized legal text is unlikely to find help from any standard English dictionary. The abbreviation belongs entirely to the Latin-scholastic register of early English legal literature and has no surviving common-language counterpart that would aid interpretation.
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Common Confusion
POU (potentia) in old property-law writing is easily confused with related Latin abbreviations. *Possibilitas* (possibility) sometimes appears in the same neighborhood of text, and the two concepts — possibility as a contingent interest, and potentia as capacity or power — overlap enough in context that readers may conflate them. The grades of possibility (*potentia propinqua*, near possibility; *potentia remotissima*, most remote possibility) are further collapsed in shortened references. Researchers should also distinguish POU from *poss.* (possessio) and from the common law term POSSIBILITY OF REVERTER, which is a distinct estate concept.
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Why It Matters in Research
**Navigating historical sources.** POU will appear principally in heavily abbreviated digests, marginal notes, and case reporters from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, where Latin compression was standard practice. Burrill reproduces the term in the context of Blackstone's *Commentaries* (Book II, pp. 169–170), where the distinction between near and remote possibility had direct consequences for conveyancing and the alienability of future interests.
**The possibility distinction matters.** The difference between *potentia propinqua* (near/common possibility) and *potentia remotissima* (most remote/improbable possibility) was not academic. English courts treated near possibilities as interests that could interact with legal rules governing estates — including rules against perpetuities in their proto-form — while remote possibilities might be disregarded entirely in calculating future interests. A researcher working on property chains or settlement documents should note which grade of possibility is being invoked.
**Digitization traps.** OCR and early digitization of law books frequently misread heavily abbreviated Latin, and POU may appear as P.O.U., Pou., or run into adjacent text. Cross-checking against the maxim literature (especially the Bulstrode reports and Blackstone) will help confirm meaning.
**Maxim research.** The *potentia debet sequi justitiam* maxim attributed to 3 Bulstrode 199 sits within a body of power-limiting maxims used to constrain prerogative and official authority. Researchers tracing constitutional or administrative law antecedents will find the maxim recurring in arguments about royal and judicial power.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical source confirming POU as a recognized abbreviation for *potentia* in English legal writing. Burrill traces the Latin root (*posse*, to be able), supplies both grades of possibility with Blackstone citations, and appends the *potentia debet sequi justitiam* maxim with a Bulstrode reference — indicating the abbreviation operated across both the property-law and the constitutional/maxim registers.
Burrill does not supply a systematic treatment of how courts actually applied the near/remote possibility distinction, which limits the entry's utility for understanding doctrine. For that, researchers must go to Blackstone directly and to the conveyancing treatises that elaborated on contingent remainders and executory interests.
No other Law Mind shelf dictionaries include POU as a distinct entry, reflecting how thoroughly this abbreviation fell out of use as Latin citation practice declined through the nineteenth century.
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Jurisdictional Note
The distinction between grades of possibility carried most doctrinal weight in English common law property practice before the nineteenth-century reforms of real property law. American jurisdictions imported the underlying concepts (contingent interests, remote possibilities) but rarely preserved the Latin abbreviation. Researchers working in colonial American or early republic property records may encounter the terms, but they are far more characteristic of English sources.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: **Possibility of Reverter**; **Future Interests**; **Legal Maxims (Potentia)**
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