Definition
A Latin legal term meaning "to convey over," "to make over," or "to transfer." In classical legal usage, transferre denotes the act of passing a right, interest, title, or property from one person to another. The term appears most frequently in Latin maxims embedded in common law and civil law treatises, particularly those governing the limits of what a transferor can convey to a transferee.
The operative principle attached to transferre is captured in the maxim: Nemo plus juris ad alium transferre potest quam ipse habet — "No one can transfer to another more right than he himself possesses." This principle, sometimes rendered as the nemo dat rule, runs throughout property law, conveyancing, and the law of assignments: a grantor, assignor, or seller cannot vest in the recipient a title or interest greater than what the grantor actually holds.
Common Confusion
Transferre is a Latin source term, not a standalone English legal term of art. Researchers should not confuse it with the English noun "transfer" or the verb "to transfer," which carry broader and more varied usage in modern legal documents. Transferre appears in legal dictionaries and treatises primarily as the root of maxims, not as a term invoked directly in pleadings or instruments. When Anderson's entry for transferre refers to incumbrance and the phrase cum onere, it is pointing to the companion principle that property transferred passes with its burdens — the recipient takes subject to existing encumbrances. This is a distinct but related concept from the nemo plus rule itself.
The nemo dat formulation (from nemo dat quod non habet) and the nemo plus juris formulation both express the same underlying limitation but appear in different doctrinal contexts: nemo dat is more characteristic of English common law sources; nemo plus juris is more characteristic of civil law and equity sources. Researchers encountering one formulation in a historical source should search for the other.
Why It Matters in Research
Transferre is a gateway term in historical legal sources. Its primary research value is not as a standalone definition but as an index entry that leads to clusters of maxims governing conveyance, assignment, and the limits of title transfer. In Anderson's Dictionary of Law, the entry explicitly connects transferre to the nemo plus juris maxim and cross-references DARE and the nemo dat principle — a chain a researcher should follow in full.
The truncated entry in Anderson's is significant: the text cuts off mid-sentence at a reference to "the holder of negotiable paper who cannot himself recove[r]." This fragment points to a critically important exception to the nemo plus rule — the holder-in-due-course doctrine in negotiable instruments law, by which a bona fide purchaser of negotiable paper can acquire better title than the transferor possessed. Researchers working on negotiable instruments, bills of exchange, or promissory notes in historical sources must understand that transferre-based maxims do not apply uniformly across all property types. The negotiable instruments exception is one of the most doctrinally significant carve-outs in common law.
Burrill's entry, though fragmentary in the source material provided, derives transferre from the Latin trans (over) — confirming the term's purely etymological presence in that dictionary. Burrill is most useful for researchers needing to trace how Latin legal terms were understood and transmitted into Anglo-American legal discourse.
When reading historical conveyancing treatises, equity opinions, or property law scholarship from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, researchers will encounter transferre and its associated maxims as foundational assertions rather than argued propositions. Courts and treatise writers often invoked nemo plus juris as self-evident. Understanding that the principle had recognized exceptions — most prominently in negotiable instruments, market overt sales in English law, and estoppel-based conveyances — is essential to reading those sources critically.
The cum onere connection flagged in Anderson's (that transfer occurs with incumbrance) is particularly important in researching mortgage law, real property conveyancing, and the treatment of encumbered estates in equity. A deed passing property transferre cum onere means the grantee takes subject to existing liens or charges, regardless of whether the deed expressly recites them.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law provides the most substantive treatment, synthesizing the term's meaning with its governing maxim and flagging the negotiable instruments exception. The entry's cross-reference structure — pointing to ONUS, DARE, and nemo dat — reflects the integrated, maxim-driven approach characteristic of nineteenth-century American legal lexicography.
Burrill's Law Dictionary, one of the most comprehensive American legal dictionaries of its era, treats transferre in its Latin glossary function, tracing the term's derivation. Burrill's strength is precision in Latin legal terminology; researchers working with civil law or mixed-jurisdiction sources will find his dictionary more attentive to Roman law roots than Anderson's.
Neither dictionary addresses the full scope of transferre's implications for modern transfer law, and neither engages with statutory modifications to the nemo plus rule that developed through the Uniform Commercial Code and its predecessors in the law of sales and negotiable instruments.