Definition
Repleviable (also spelled replevisable) describes property that is legally eligible to be recovered through the writ of replevin — that is, capable of being taken back by its owner upon the giving of sufficient pledges or security, pending resolution of the underlying dispute over possession. The term is an adjective modifying the status of specific goods or chattels: if property is repleviable, a court may authorize its provisional return to the claimant before final judgment.
The opposite condition — property that is not repleviable — historically applied to goods seized under certain legal processes or held under circumstances where the law denied the remedy of replevin entirely, such as cattle taken by the Crown in withernam (a reciprocal or retaliatory distraint).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Capable of being replevied."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Capable of being replevied."
The common and legal definitions are technically identical in form, but the common usage conveys nothing without understanding what "replevied" means. For a lay reader, this definition is circular. The legal content lives entirely in the doctrine of replevin — the common definition offers no independent guidance, making the legal context essential to understanding the term at all.
Common Confusion
Repleviable is sometimes used interchangeably with replevisable in older sources. These are variant spellings of the same concept, not distinct legal terms, and researchers should treat them as equivalent. The more substantive confusion is between repleviable (a quality of the property) and replevin (the writ or action itself). A thing is repleviable if it can be the subject of replevin; being repleviable does not mean replevin has been granted or will succeed — it means the remedy is legally available to be sought.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively as a doctrinal qualifier within discussions of replevin and distraint, not as a standalone subject of legal analysis. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should treat it as a signal to look upstream to the replevin entry or the distress and distraint framework of the jurisdiction at issue.
The practical importance of the repleviable/non-repleviable distinction was greatest in English common law, where certain categories of distrained goods were withheld from replevin by the doctrine of withernam. When researching pre-twentieth-century American or English materials, be alert to the fact that the classes of property deemed non-repleviable have shifted substantially — goods that were non-repleviable under early common law forms may be fully subject to modern statutory replevin equivalents.
In American jurisdictions, many states replaced or substantially modified the common law writ of replevin through code pleading and civil procedure reforms beginning in the nineteenth century. Sources discussing what is or is not repleviable under English common law may not map cleanly onto a given state's statutory scheme. The term itself appears less frequently in modern American practice materials, having been largely absorbed into broader discussions of claim and delivery or statutory replevin procedures.
When working with the Law Mind corpus, expect to find repleviable primarily in foundational common law treatises, English practice materials, and early American digests. The term's absence from a modern source does not mean the underlying concept is inapplicable — it may simply have been restated in procedural code language.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill defines repleviable straightforwardly as "that may be replevied, or taken back on pledge," and cross-references replevisable, confirming that the two spellings are interchangeable rather than doctrinally distinct. This is accurate and consistent across the historical sources.
Black's second edition does not contain a discrete entry for repleviable under that spelling; the relevant Black's entry in the source material provided is for repetitum namium (a repeated or reciprocal distress; withernam), which is the doctrinal context that produced the category of non-repleviable property in the first place. This is instructive: the boundary of what is repleviable was historically defined in part by what could be seized in withernam, and withernam goods were precisely the class of chattels that could not be replevied. Researchers should read the repleviable concept alongside the withernam and distress entries in Black's for full doctrinal context.
Neither historical dictionary source provides substantive discussion of when or why property is or is not repleviable beyond the bare definitional statement. For analytical depth, Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3) and Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium remain the foundational sources on the scope of the replevin writ and the classes of non-repleviable goods at common law.
Jurisdictional Note
American states vary in whether they retain the common law term replevin or have replaced it with statutory equivalents (often called "claim and delivery"). In jurisdictions that have substantially codified the remedy, courts may no longer use repleviable as a term of art, though the underlying eligibility question — whether specific property can be recovered by this provisional remedy — persists in procedural analysis.