1. Roman & civil law. The reentering of one’s residence.
2. Roman & civil law. The doctrine that a restoration of a person’s lost rights or status relates back to the time of the original loss or deprivation, esp. in regard to the restoration of the status of a prisoner of war.
“[A] person who is taken captive and comes back within the limits of the Empire is correctly described as returning by postliminium. By ‘limen’ (threshold) we mean the frontier of a house, and the old lawyers applied the word to the frontier of the Roman State; so that the word postliminium conveys the idea of recrossing the frontier. If a prisoner is recovered from a beaten foe he is deemed to have come back by postliminium.” R.W. Lee, The Elements of Roman Law 85–86 (4th ed. 1956).
3. Int’l law. The act of invalidating all of an occupying force’s illegal acts, and the post-occupation revival of all illegitimately modified legal relations to their former condition, esp. the restoration of property to its rightful owner.
— Also termed postliminy.
