Land Claim
Land claims are a legal declaration of desired control over areas of property including bodies of water. The phrase is usually only used with respect to disputed or unresolved land claims. Some types of land claims include aboriginal land claims, Antarctic land claims, and post-colonial land claims.
Land claims is sometimes used as a term when referring to disputed territories like Western Sahara or to refer to the claims of displaced persons.
In the colonial times of the United States persons could claim a piece of land for themselves and the claim has different level of merit according to the de facto conditions:
- claim without any action on the ground
- claim with (movable) property of the claimant on the ground
- claim with the claimant visiting the land
- claim with claimant living on the land.
Today, claiming land is no longer possible, yet large plots of land with little economical value (e.g., in Alaska) can still be bought for very low prices. Also, in certain parts of the world, land can still be obtained by making productive use of it.
Read more about Land Claim: Mining Claim (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words land and/or claim:
“If a man own land, the land owns him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 14661536)