Естерден бұрынғы заман

Legal phrase denoting before memory or record

Time immemorial (Ab immemorabili) is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition, indefinitely ancient, "ancient beyond memory or record". The phrase is used in legally significant contexts as well as in common parlance.

In law, time immemorial denotes "a period of time beyond which legal memory cannot go," and "time out of mind." Most frequently, the phrase "time immemorial" appears as a legal term of art in judicial discussion of common law development and, in the United States, the property rights of Native Americans. Medieval historian Richard Barber describes this as "the watershed between a primarily oral culture and a world where writing was paramount". Common law is a body of law identified by judges in judicial proceedings, rather than created by the legislature. Judges determine the common law by pinpointing the legal principles consistently reiterated in previous legal cases over a long period of time. The Prescription Act 1832, which noted that the full expression was "time immemorial, or time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," replaced the burden of proving "time immemorial" for the enjoyment of particular land rights with statutory fixed time periods of up to 60 years. In Knowles v. Dow, a New Hampshire court found that a regular usage for twenty years, unexplained and uncontradicted, is sufficient to warrant a jury in finding the existence of an immemorial custom. More often than not, however, American courts identify common law without any reference to the phrase "time immemorial."

"Time Immemorial" is sometimes used to describe the priority date of water rights holders. Under prior appropriation, water rights are acquired by making a beneficial use of water. Water rights that are acquired earlier are senior, and have priority over later, junior water rights during water shortages due to drought or over appropriation. However, courts occasionally find that the tribe's water rights carry a "time immemorial" priority date, the most senior date conceivable, for aboriginal uses of water on reserved land that overlaps with the tribe's aboriginal land. For example, in U. S. v. Adair, the court reasoned that the Klamath Tribe necessarily had water rights with a priority date of "time immemorial" because they had lived and used the waters in Central Oregon and Northern California for more than a thousand uninterrupted years prior to entering a treaty with the United States in 1864. plaintiff tribes and courts sometimes describe their occupancy as dating back to "time immemorial."

Historically, American judges lacked confidence in the use of Native American oral traditional evidence, oral histories shared between past and present generations, in court. Since the Pueblo de Zia decision of the United States Court of Federal Claims in 1964, oral traditional evidence has received increased judicial endorsement.