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Latin. An agreement giving the pledgee the benefit of a forfeiture clause. The lex commissoria in pledge, was a condition attached to the contract, under which, if the pledger failed to redeem the subject pledged within a certain time, his right of redemption ceased, and the pledge became the absolute and irredeemable property of the pledgee. This condition, at one time very common, was, at a later period of the history of the civil law (A.D. 326), declared to be illegal by the Emperor Constantine. In Scotland, under the Pawnbroking Acts, a subject pledged is forfeited if not redeemed within a year, or, ...