View source for Sub modo

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'''''Sub modo''''' is [[Latin]] for "subject to a modification or qualification". More generally, it is anything "under a qualification, condition, or restriction."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sub%20modo|title=sub modo:adverb|website=Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary |access-date=June 5, 2025}}</ref> In a contract ''sub modo'', the agreement between the parties may be altered or limited within certain parameters.<ref name=USLegal>{{cite web|url=https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/sub-modo/|website=uslegal.com|title=Sub Modo Law and Legal Definition|access-date=June 5, 2025}}</ref>

For example, in a 19th-century [[United States Supreme Court]] case, ''[[Eldridge v. Trezevant]]'', 160 U.S. 452 (1896), a landowner with property adjoining the [[Mississippi River]] filed for an injunction to block the State of [[Louisiana]] from building a [[levee]] through his property. Citing an earlier Louisiana case, ''Ruch v. New Orleans'', 43 La. Ann. 275, the court upheld a lower court's dismissal of the injunction, stating:<ref>{{cite court |litigants=Eldridge v. Trezevant|vol=160|reporter=U.S.|opinion=452|court=United States Supreme Court|date=1896|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LTIyKKVN9YIC&pg=PA465&dq=%22Sub+modo%22+-wikipedia+trezevant&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=|access-date=June 5, 2025}}</ref>
{{blockquote|Under the doctrine of a servitude, the [[riparian]] owner enjoys his property ''sub modo'', i.e. subject to the right of the public to reserve space enough for levees, public works, and the like; that over this space the front proprietor never acquires complete dominion. It never passes free of this reservation to a purchaser.}}

In other words, in this particular case, the court held that there are certain inherent limitations to property ownership.

An agreement ''sub modo'' does not just apply to real property. Any agreement, contract, license, privilege, or right can be ''sub modo''.<ref name=USLegal />

Generally, the term is considered archaic and somewhat dandified.{{cn|date=June 2025}}

==See also==
* [[Eminent domain]]
* [[List of Latin legal terms]]

==References==
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{{Use Oxford spelling|date=July 2018}}

[[Category:Latin legal terminology]]

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