International Law Concerning United States Territory
The United States is not restricted from making laws governing its own territory by international law. The United States territory can include occupied territory, which is a geographic area that claims sovereignty, but is being forcibly subjugated to the authority of the United States of America. United States territory can also include disputed territory, which is a geographic area claimed by United States of America and one (or more) rival governments.
Like most nations, the United States of America has acquired territory by force and conquest (Latin, "to seek for"). Internationally (specifically according to the Hague conventions), United States territory can include areas occupied by and controlled by a United States army. When de facto military control is maintained and exercised, occupation (and thus possession) extends to that territory. By convention, the forces in control of the territory have a responsibility to provide for the basic needs of individuals under their control (which includes food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, law maintenance, and social order). To prevent systematic abuse of puppet governments by the occupation forces, they must enforce laws that were in place in the territory prior to the occupation.
Read more about this topic: United States Territory
Famous quotes containing the words law, united, states and/or territory:
“And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 4:8,9.
“The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)