terra nullius

English

Etymology

From Latin terra nūllīus (“nobody's land”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛɹə nʌˈlaɪ.əs/

Noun

terra nullius (countable and uncountable, plural terrae nullius)

1. (international law) Empty land; land not legally belonging to anyone; no man's land.
   • 1993, Patrick Dodson, ‘Welcome Speech to Conference on the Position of Indigenous People in National Constitutions’, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 146:

     When Aboriginal people showed up which they inevitably did they had to be subjected, incarcerated or eradicated: to keep the myth of terra nullius alive.

   • 2015 May 24, Agence France-Presse, “Kingdom of Enclava: new micro-nation settles for spot on Croat-Serb border”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Following the breakup of former Yugoslavia in 1991, seven new states emerged in the region with many border disputes that left some territories as terrae nullius, or no-man’s lands.

   • 2017, Jamie Bartlett, chapter 8, in Radicals, William Heinemann, →ISBN:

     This overgrown and unremarkable little swamp is terra nullius. Under vaguely defined and loosely enforced international law, the first person who claims sovereignty over terra nullius can have it.

Coordinate terms

• res nullius

Further reading

• terra nullius on Wikipedia.Wikipedia