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:
“Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I have been searching history to see if really a woman has any precedent to claim the right to have her rights, and I am compelled to say that we men are not so much ahead of women after all, and the only way we have kept our reputation up is by keeping her down—and don’t you forget it!”
—George E. Foster, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 38-41 (October 1886)