Definition
Quod permittat (Latin: "that he permit") was a writ in old English law commanding a defendant to allow the plaintiff to exercise a right that the defendant was wrongfully obstructing or denying. The writ did not demand that the defendant do something affirmative but rather that he cease interfering — that he permit the plaintiff's enjoyment of a right already held.
Two distinct applications appear in the historical sources:
1. Quod permittat prosternere: A writ available to the heir of a person who had been disseised of a common of pasture, brought against the heir of the disseisor. It restored access to the common and ran between heirs — not the original parties — making it the appropriate remedy when the original cause of action had descended to the next generation.
2. Quod permittat as a nuisance remedy: A writ lying against any person who erected a structure on his own ground so close to a neighbor's property that the building hung over or otherwise constituted a nuisance. Here the writ commanded the builder to permit the injured party relief — essentially to allow demolition or removal of the offending structure. This form was subsequently abolished.
Both forms belong to the closed chapter of common law writs and have no modern procedural equivalent. They are encountered today exclusively in historical legal materials.
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Common Confusion
The two applications of this writ are easily collapsed into one because historical dictionaries disagree on which definition to lead with. Black's (both editions) and Burrill describe only the common-of-pasture form; Rapalje & Lawrence describe only the nuisance form. Neither source acknowledges that the other variant exists. A researcher encountering the term in a medieval or early modern document should not assume one application to the exclusion of the other without examining the factual context of the surrounding text.
Quod permittat should also not be confused with quod permittat prosternere, which is the fuller and more precise title of the common-of-pasture writ. Some sources use the shorter form as shorthand for both writs; others use it to refer only to the nuisance variant. Context is the only reliable guide.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a research hazard rather than a living legal concept. Its value lies in identification: a reader working through early English plea rolls, Yearbook extracts, abridgments, or early treatises (Fitzherbert, Coke, or Comyns) may encounter quod permittat as a writ form and need to understand which procedural posture the case occupies.
Two traps are specific to corpus research:
First, the split in the historical dictionaries is not a minor variation — the two writ forms address fundamentally different injuries (interference with common land rights versus structural nuisance), involve different parties (heirs of disseisor/disseised versus neighbor and builder), and arise in different procedural contexts. A keyword search that retrieves entries from Black's will miss the nuisance application entirely, and vice versa with Rapalje & Lawrence.
Second, researchers working on the history of nuisance law or the law of commons will find quod permittat at the procedural intersection of both bodies of doctrine. The nuisance form is a predecessor thread in the long development of remedies against encroachments and overhanging structures — a line that eventually runs through case law on private nuisance and trespass to airspace. Tracing that doctrinal lineage requires recognizing the writ when it appears in early sources under this label.
The abolition reference in Rapalje & Lawrence (citing 3 Stephen's Commentaries, 7th ed.) provides a terminus: by the period of systematic procedural reform in the nineteenth century, this writ had been swept away along with the broader writ system. Nothing in modern civil procedure corresponds to it.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the Latin meaning ("that he permit") and on the ancient character of the writ. Beyond that, they diverge in coverage rather than in substance.
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill present substantially identical definitions, all traceable to Cowell's Interpreter and Termes de la Ley — the foundational English legal glossaries. These sources define the writ exclusively in the common-of-pasture context and say nothing of the nuisance application.
Rapalje & Lawrence present an entirely different definition, citing Termes de la Ley at page 479 for the nuisance application and noting abolition. The citation to Termes de la Ley appears in both camps, which suggests that the original source text contained both applications and the later compilers selected different passages without acknowledging the other.
None of the four dictionaries synthesizes both applications, and none flags the omission. This is an unusual case where consulting multiple historical dictionaries is not merely additive — it is necessary to recover the full scope of the term.
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Jurisdictional Note
Quod permittat was a writ of English common law and has no recognized American equivalent. American courts inherited English common law principles regarding commons and nuisance but did not transplant the writ system itself. The term may appear in early American legal materials as a learned reference or historical citation, but it was never operative in American procedure.
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