Roman antecedents of the present-day use of river shores and margins in Spain

Abstract

We know that Roman law did not recognize, as we do today, the general category of servitudes or easements, at least in their present-day form as what have come to be known as “legal servitudes”; but, as credited by various sources, Roman law did ex lege recognise certain constraints on the private ownership of immovable property, although under no circumstances could these be classified as servitutes. Among what Romanists refer to as the “limitations of public law”, that is in the interest of the community, we find the limitation that constitutes the object of my study here: that imposed on riparian landowners whereby they are obliged to suffer, in relation to their property, all that is necessary to ensure the public usus of the river and its banks..