How do you claim terra nullius?

How does a country claim terra nullius?

  • Someone from/hired by the country is the first person to view a coast from a ship.

    Votes: 1 3.2%
  • Someone from/hired by the country is the first person to set foot on the area.

    Votes: 1 3.2%
  • First person to set foot in an area and do some claiming ceremony (flag raising, etc.).

    Votes: 5 16.1%
  • Claiming ceremony plus announcement from a central government.

    Votes: 7 22.6%
  • Continuous occupation and administration.

    Votes: 17 54.8%

  • Total voters
    31
The concept of terra nullius came up once in a while in the age of discovery, mainly in Australia and Antarctica. However, the requirements for claiming "nobody's land" varied based on the time and situation. So, if a place is truly terra nullius, what do you think creates a valid claim over it?
 
No one is there already. So, a lot of the sub Antarctic islands and that's it.

That doesn't actually answer the question Lawyer is asking, which is what, supposing that you wanted to claim a region of "terra nullis" like those sub-Antarctic islands, would you have to do to establish this claim?
 
"So, if a place is truly terra nullius, what do you think creates a valid claim over it?"

Nothing. In order to claim land as your own you need to actually be using it for something as far as I am concerned. In Principle, until those lands are being used I consider them unowned and unclaimed.

Of course in practice they are claimed by nations in the same way States claim all their land; Military Force.
 
For the moon and everything off the planet there are international agreements that none can be owned by any country. Same for people, I imagine. Also stuff in Antartica about freezing any land claims and loads of countries have bases dotting the area. Argentina seems to be the only ones to much care about their claim though. And I recall someone saw the portion of the continent that had been unclaimed by the time they froze future claims and claimed it for himself while some American claimed the area neither Sudan or Egypt claimed so he could call his daughter a princess. Unless you actually get to the land, use it, and manage to keep it though it is ultimately meaningless.
 
The most common sort of arrangement is this:
If you expect other people to recognize your claim without having overwhelming force available to you, you need to satisfy two conditions-
You need to have meaningfully mixed your labor with the land you're claiming. Typically something like you need to build a cabin and plant a crop successfully on it.
Secondly you need to have occupied it relatively recently. This is where notions like 'Adverse Possession' come in, something that makes people scratch their heads in the absence of an understanding of history. The intent behind that bit of common law is to prevent somebody from coming in, claiming all the water rights or some other kind of important right in an area, and then vanishing and socking the new settlers with a huge lawsuit much later on after they'd mixed lots of labor into the 'unclaimed' land.
 
"So, if a place is truly terra nullius, what do you think creates a valid claim over it?"

Nothing. In order to claim land as your own you need to actually be using it for something as far as I am concerned. In Principle, until those lands are being used I consider them unowned and unclaimed.

Of course in practice they are claimed by nations in the same way States claim all their land; Military Force.

I thought about putting a cynical poll response like this, but I figured everyone would vote for it.

There's a separate question of how much land can you get through one of the above choices. Like, if a claiming ceremony works, does it work over the whole landmass? What if you don't realize the extent of the area you're on due to ice? If you need continuous occupation and you're only on the coast, could some other nation set up in the interior and claim that?
 
Well according to the Guano Islands Act, you need to have shit on it. Then the whole force of the United States of America will recognize the defense of your shit.
 
For the moon and everything off the planet there are international agreements that none can be owned by any country. Same for people, I imagine.
Nope. The Outer Space Treaty only forbids national claims to territory (or more specifically, "national appropriation"), since in the context of the 1960s there wasn't a lot of reason to get into personal or corporate claims. Even then, there's questions about how significant a ban this actually is, since you could easily put forward reasonable claims that avoid explicitly saying that you're appropriating territories but are, in effect, equivalent. For instance, if you built a base on the Moon, then most people would agree that you could forbid other people from acting in a certain radius of the base without your permission, to avoid accidental damage or injury from crashes. But in effect this gives you a small territory that you control, thereby bypassing the Outer Space Treaty.

The limits of the Outer Space Treaty are probably the hottest point of debate currently in space law. No one's quite sure precisely what it actually limits and what it permits.

Also stuff in Antartica about freezing any land claims and loads of countries have bases dotting the area. Argentina seems to be the only ones to much care about their claim though.
And Chile, don't forget Chile.
 
Typically something like you need to build a cabin and plant a crop successfully on it.

So how does Australia claim the outback? There has to be some sort of principle of "you've occupied all the economically valuable parts of this landmass, ergo you get all of the uneconomic mountains and deserts too."
 
So how does Australia claim the outback? There has to be some sort of principle of "you've occupied all the economically valuable parts of this landmass, ergo you get all of the uneconomic mountains and deserts too."

They have a cabin out there. It is the crop that is the difficult part.
 
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