Appendix III: (volume one)
Additional Quotes Demonstrating the Reality of Prescriptive Law
The following quotes supporting prescriptive law were not used in either the content of the book or in the footnotes, but add additional support to the importance and historical use of these laws.
"As the Legitimists admit that if a dynasty occupies a throne for one hundred years without a protest it obtains a prescriptive right [to rule]. . . ."[1] (emphasis added)
Immemorial possession [100 years of rule by the usurper] is legally presumed to have survived all proof of title on either side. . . . . [It is] considered as resting upon . . . a peremptory rule [that is, one which is "absolute and final, not entitled to a delay or reconsideration," which are part of] the law of nations. . . .[2]
In Island of Palmas Case, Clipperton Island Case, Case Concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear, and Case Concerning the Territorial Dispute, the tribunals ruled that a failure to protest the opposing state's sovereignty claim to disputed territory led to a presumption of acquiescence. In Chamizal Arbitration, Legal Status of Eastern Greenland, and Fisheries Case, the tribunals concluded that protests were sufficient to preserve the state's claim to the territory.[3]
". . . In the Champizal Arbitration, [it was held] that 'possession maintained in the teeth of constant opposition did not amount to prescription.'"[4]
Prescriptive title by adverse possession occurs where the identity of the previous sovereign is known, but the state acquiring title has exercised sovereign authority over the territory so long that the previous sovereign is regarded as having forfeited his or her title.[5]
The most usual methods of acquiring territorial jurisdiction [internal sovereignty] on the part of a sovereign state are discovery, occupation, conquest, and cession. To these may be added, for particular cases, prescription and accretion.[6] (emphasis added)
". . . if anyone uninterruptedly possessed a thing or right beyond the memory of man, he should be regarded as its lawful owner or holder."[7]
". . . If anyone uninterruptedly possessed a thing or right beyond the memory of man [beyond a hundred years], he should be regarded as its lawful owner or holder."[8]
Length of possession [by the usurper] raises a presumption of title [or valid ownership by the usurper], because it is not to be supposed that the former owner would allow another to be in possession, unless he had abandoned or ceded his right. . . .[9]
In spite of the fact that no tribunal existed to try such cases:
. . . the writers on international law . . . concur[ed] in the opinion that the uninterrupted occupation of territory by one nation for a long period of time should exclude the claim of every other. (Vattel, Law of Nations, Bk. II §149; Wheaton, International Law, §164; 1 Oppenheim, International Law, § 243).[10]
The legitimacy of kings, or rather of governments [whole complete nations or kingdoms] . . . is the effect of long possession, as prescription is a title [or right] to private property. The principle of "legitimacy" in the sense proclaimed by Talleyrand . . . was [prescription or] that which had been consistently upheld . . . as the basic principle of any European juridical system. . . .[11]
"The principle of extinctive prescription (bars of claims by lapse of time) is widely recognized as a general principle of law constituting part of international law; and has been accepted and applied by arbitral tribunals."[12]
"Prescription" is ". . . in both domestic and international law, the effect of the lapse of time in creating and [or] destroying rights."[13]
If "prescription" takes place, then ". . . an absolute right has accrued to [the usurping] state. . . ."[14]
[In] immemorial possession . . . [the] origin [or true legal status of the former deposed sovereign house] is unknown or uncertain [because of so long a period of time] and it is almost impossible [after such a long period of time – 100 years] to prove its legality or illegality. . . .[15]
Every government [every monarchy] that is not established by military force, or founded on the express consent of the people, must derive its authority from positive law or from long-continued usage [that is] . . . from statute or from prescription. . . .[16]
The state has territorial sovereignty or has the legal right to exercise actual control over part of the earth’s surface [which in internal sovereignty]. This territorial [or internal] sovereignty may be “acquired originally by occupation or by accretion, or derivatively by cession or other consent, by award of international conference, conquest, or prescription.[17]
". . . After so many years of prescription our kings and emperors [forfeit or] have lost all those true and ancient imperial rights [of rulership]. . . ."[18]
It is the end of all dynastic rights for the deposed who abandon their rights through neglect for 50 to 100 years.
"Prescription is the sine qua non [that which is absolutely necessary] . . . to explain the legitimation of regimes with immoral beginnings."[19]
"If a long prescription, without an original title, cannot secure the consciences of kings and subjects, God help the world! For great kingdoms, if traced back to their origin, are great robberies."[20]
". . . It is incontestable that the abandonment may be presumed, in a case of a very long possession not contested or interrupted."[21]
"Full rights of prescription are only achieved with the acquiescence of the other claimant."[22]
"Long, undisputed . . . possession overrides a formal title to sovereignty."[23]
Because:
". . . the peace of the public [is] disturbed . . .and civil wars, ever and always attendant on changes in government, [therefore] the general good of mankind [is] inconsistent with the revival of old claims. . . ."[24] This is merely common sense, which is at the root of natural law, the highest law on earth, and ". . . prescriptive rights are perfectly consistent with the natural law.”[25]
Prescription in international law renders a state capable of acquiring sovereignty over a territory which it governs and possesses and has governed and possessed for a very long time cum animo domini (with the intention of acting as master), without contestation. For the sake of general peace it is necessary that the origin of the titles of sovereignties should not always be subject to question; time mends the original defects of acquisition and creates a regular title.[26]
Lapse of time exceeding the memory of man [determined to be 100 years] is commonly deemed sufficient to raise a presumption of abandonment of claim, and it may probably be laid down, not only as a matter of presumption but as an institution of jus gentium voluntarium [implied consent in international law], that possession for time out of mind [100 years], uninterrupted and unchallenged, conveys absolute ownership. A right may thus be transferred from king to king or from people to people by dereliction followed by assumption of possession, as well as by express consent. Even the rights of sovereignty may be so acquired.[27]
Where the possession of the territory is accompanied by emphatic protests on the part of the former sovereign, no title by prescription can arise for such title is founded upon the acquiescence of the dispossessed state, and in such circumstances, consent of third states is of little consequence. However, over a period of time recognition may ultimately validate a defective title, although much will depend upon the circumstances including the attitude of the former sovereign.[28]
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Sovereign Prince of Beneventum (1754-1838) widely regarded as one of the most influential diplomats in European history, explained, "A sovereign whose state is under conquest (if he be a hereditary sovereign) does not cease to be sovereign, unless he has ceded his right or renounces it, nor does he lose [it] by the conquest. . . . [unless he fails to maintain it through prescription]."[29]
"Immemorial possession [over 100 years in length] creates a conclusive presumptive title; a presumption ‘juris et de jure’ [in law] which does not permit any proof to the contrary. . . ."[30]
Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), another one of the founding fathers of international law, states that "prescription" is one of the ways of losing dynastic sovereignty to a usurper. He declares that:
. . . the rightful Prince shall labor to reduce the Rebels to Obedience or at least by solemn declaration shall protest and preserve his right over them; till by long Acquiescence and silence he may be presumed to have given up his claim [which is neglect or legal abandonment which causes a permanent and irretrievable loss of royal and sovereign rights].[31]
Through the operation of adverse possession, the actual exercise of sovereign rights over a period of time is allowed to remedy the original defect in the title to the concerned territory. As the operation of the two concepts, i.e., immemorial possession and acquisitive prescription proper (akin to adverse possession), ultimately produces a single, common outcome – the acquisition of a good title – there is a tendency to lump them together under the head of "acquisitive prescription."[32]
". . . Immemorial prescription clearly extinguishes the right itself, and not merely the power to enforce it by [judicial] action. . . ."[33]
Still another source of the right of property pertaining to nations [is prescription. It] consists in exclusive and uncontested possession [in other words, the original sovereign acquiesced, which possession was] sufficiently prolonged and uninterrupted. This principle, which is founded on the tacit consent of mankind, is binding on all states, and in process of time acquires a force equal to that of a formal contract, and amounts to a positive international right.[34]
". . . Is it to be wondered at, that mankind should reverence authority founded in prescription, when they observe that it is prescription which confer the title to almost every thing. . . ."[35]
[O]ne King may acquire a Right of Sovereignty, to the Prejudice [loss] of another King; and one free People to the Prejudice [loss] of another free People, as by an express Consent, so also by a Dereliction [or abandonment], and that taking of Possession which follows it . . . receives . . . new Force and Virtue from it [that is becomes a lawful right].[36]
. . . The princes of other dominions, subject heretofore to the [Holy] Roman Empire, . . . afterwards became absolute within themselves [that is, sovereign], not only by Arms, but also by prescription (which is every where admitted among the Law of Nations).[37] (John Selden, Of the Dominion and Ownership of the Seas, book 1, Marchamont Nedham, trans., 1652, p. 170)
[The] British Empire, an entity which had come into existence by lawful prescription; [is] a most strong Title, the Dominion or Ownership of the same Empire [was] founded [on it].[38]
". . . Prescription became crucial to sovereignty, property, and empire in the early modern period [in European ideologies]."[39] (Edward Cavanagh, "Prescription and Empire from Justinian to Grotius," The Historical Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, June 2017, p 5)
Footnotes:
[1] B. Waters, "New Kings on Old Thrones," Pearson's Magazine, February 1898.
[2] Richard Wildman, Institutes of International Law, vol. I, 1850, p. 51.
[3] Jon M. Van Dyke, "Who Owns Tok-Do/Takeshima? Should These Islets Affect the Maritime Boundary Between Japan and Korea?," p. 17; 2007: http:/www.kmi.re.kr/data/seminar/20041004-01.pdf.
[4] Husain M. Albaharna, The Legal Status of the Arabian Gulf States: a Study of their Treaty Relations and their International Problems, 1968, p. 191 and D. H. N. Johnson, "Acquisitive Prescription in International Law," British Yearbook of International Law, vol. 27, 1950, 345.
[5] Stephen Hall, Public International Law, 2003, p. 257.
[6] William Livesey Burdick, Handbook of the Law of Real Property, part 4, no. 216, 1914, p. 585.
[7] Charles P. Sherman, "Acquisitive Prescription. Its Existing World-Wide Uniformity," The Yale Law Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, December 1911, p. 156.
[8] Charles P. Sherman, "Acquisitive Prescription. Its Existing World-Wide Uniformity," The Yale Law Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, December 1911, p. 156.
[9] Richard Wildman, Institutes of International Law: International Law in Times of Peace, printed in The Law Library, vol. 68, 1850, p. 51-52.
[10] Harvard Law Review Association, Harvard Law Review, vol. 23, 1910, p. 556.
[11] William Alison Phillips, The Confederation of Europe, 1914, p. 93.
[12] Greenriver Enterprizes Six Nations, Inc., et al., v. United States (Decisions on Objections to Jurisdiction, 20 July 2006.
[13] Prescription, property law; 2015: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/475119/prescription.
[14] John Norton Pomeroy, Lectures on International Law in Time of Peace, Theodore Salisbury Woolsey, ed., no. 117, 1886, p. 120.
[15] Surya Prakash Sharma, Territorial Acquisition, Disputes, and International Law, 1997, p. 108.
[16] John Allen, Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative in England: A New Addition, 1849, p. 158.
[17] Lowell S. Gustafson, The Sovereignty Dispute Over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, 1988, p. xi.
[18] Quote from Hermann Conring (1606-1681) in Constantin Fasolt, Past Sense — Studies in Medieval and Early Modern European History, 2014, p. 364.
[19] James Daly, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought, 1979, p. 121.
[20] Arthur O'Leary, Miscellaneous Tracts, 2nd ed., Article 3, 1731, P. 106.
[21] A. G. Hoffter, The International Law of Europe, 8th ed., F. Heinrich Geffcken, ed., no 3, section 12, 1888.
[22] Dennis Canavan as quoted in Angel M. Oliveri López, Key to an Enigma: British Sources Disprove British Claims to the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, 1995, p. 33.
[23] Enrico Milano, Unlawful Territorial Situations in International Law, 2006, p. 88.
[24] Arthur O'Leary, "Article III: An Address to the Common People of Ireland," Miscellaneous Tracts, 1781, p. 107.
[25] William Sternberg, “Origin of Human Rights,” Marquette Law Review, vol. 24, issue 1, art. 3, December 1, 1939, p. 11.
[26] Fabre, “Des Servitudes dans le Droit International,” 1901, International Servitudes, John Brown Scott, ed., 1910, p. 201.
[27] Thomas Alfred Walker, A History of the Law of Nations, vol. 1, 1899, p. 296.
[28] Seokwoo Lee, "Continuing Relevance of Traditional Modes of Territorial Acquisition in International Law and a Modest Proposal," Connecticut Journal of International Law, Fall 2000, p. 8 and see Charles G. Fenwick, International Law, 4th ed., 1965, p. 351.
[29] Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Prigord, Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand, vol. 2, Duc de Broglie, ed., 1932, p. 160.
[30] Richard Wild, Institutions of International Law, vol. 1, section 74, 1850.
[31] Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Jean Barbeyrac and William Percivale trans., Book VII, chapter 7, no. 5, p. 577.
[32] Surya Prakash Sharma, Territorial Acquisition, Disputes, and International Law, 1997, p. 108.
[33] Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, An Introduction to the Study of Jurisprudence, Nathaniel Lindley, trans., note 1 to 205, 1855, p. 62.
[34] Edward Miner Gallaudet, A Manual of International Law, 3rd ed., 1889, p. 108.
[35] William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785, pp. 407-408.
[36] Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, Richard Tuck, ed., Book 2, p. 499.
[37] John Selden, Of the Dominion and Ownership of the Seas, book 1, Marchamont Nedham, trans., 1652, p. 170.
[38] John Selden, Of the Dominion and Ownership of the Seas, book 1, Marchamont Nedham, trans., 1652, p. 2 and David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, 2000, pp. 100-124)
[39] Edward Cavanagh, "Prescription and Empire from Justinian to Grotius," The Historical Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, June 2017, p 5.
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