terra nullius

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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:
      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.

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