Pre-Emption
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
1.
Under this term one nation has sometimes. claimed a right in behalf of its subjects to buy the goods of foreigners in transit through her jurisdiction.
2.
The iirst buying of any thing. It was a privilege heretofore allowed the king's purveyor, but abolished by Stat. 12 emption, was a right enjoyed by the crown of buying up provisions and other necessaries by the intervention of the king's purveyors, for the use of the royal household, at an appraised valuation, in preference to all others, and even without consent of the owners; and also of forcibly impressing the carriages and horses of the subject to do the king's business on the public roads, in the conveyance of timber, baggage, and the like. This prerogative of the crown appears to have been made the occasion of much abuse in the early reigns, as one of the chief constitutional struggles of the period was for the restriction and regulation of this right.
Broum. 3.
A privilege accorded by publicland laws, particularly those of the United States, to an actual settler upon a limited portion of the public lands, to purchase thg,t portion, at a fixed price, in preference to all other applicants. Pre-empt: to take initial steps to secure the prior right to purchase a tract of the public lands. Pre-emptioner: one who holds a prior right to purchase certain public land.