Allodial Title - United States

United States

Black's Law Dictionary 2nd edition offers these definitions:

• Allodial — Free; not holden of any lord or superior; owned without obligation of vassalage or fealty; the opposite of feudal.
• Allodium — Land held absolutely in one’s own right, and not of any lord or superior; land not subject to feudal duties or burdens. An estate held by absolute ownership, without recognizing any superior to whom any duty is due on account thereof.

Before 1774, all land in the American colonies could also be traced to royal grants, either a single enormous grant creating each proprietary colony (e.g. Pennsylvania and Maryland), or smaller direct grants within crown colonies (e.g. Virginia). The original grantee (recipient of the land) then sold or granted parcels of land within his grant to private citizens and other legal entities. However, when the colonies won the Revolutionary War, they did not want to retain a feudal system of land ownership. The Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended formal hostilities and recognized American independence, also had the effect of ending any residual rights held by the original grantees or the Crown. Essentially, this merely recognized that no person holding land in the new United States owed any allegiance or duty to the Crown or any English noble. There is no specific reference to allodial title in the text of the treaty. Some states created a form of allodial title while others retained the tenurial system with the state as the new ultimate landholder.

Apart from land that was formally owned at the time of the Revolutionary War, most American landholders can trace their title back to grants by the federal or state governments of land obtained by purchase (Louisiana Purchase, Florida, Alaska), treaty (the Ohio Valley, New Mexico, Arizona, and California), or annexation (Texas, Hawaii). However, in reality, previous grants prior to those territories becoming U.S. possessions were recognized; ownership under French and Spanish crown grants in the Louisiana Purchase and Guadalupe-Hidalgo/Gadsden territories remained valid. Although in Dartmouth College v. Woodward the United States Supreme Court rebuffed New Hampshire's attempt to convert Dartmouth College from a private college into a public university, the Court decided this based on the Constitution prohibiting states from impairing the obligations of the contract that created the private corporation that owned the land, and not based on any principle that the land was somehow immune from state control.

Many state constitutions (Arkansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York) refer to allodial title, but only to clearly distinguish it from feudal title. The conditions under which the government can compel the sale of privately owned real property for public necessity are established by eminent domain laws of either the federal or state governments, respectively. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires just compensation for eminent domain compelled sale. In addition, the government powers of police power and escheat have been retained in the American legal system.