The principle of postliminium, as a part of public international law, is a specific version of the maxim ex injuria jus non oritur

Ex injuria jus non oritur

Ex injuria jus non oritur is a principle of international law. The phrase implies that "unjust acts cannot create law". Its rival principle is ex factis jus oritur, in which the existence of facts creates law....

, providing for the invalidity of all illegitimate acts that an occupant may have performed on a given territory after its recapture by the legitimate sovereign. Therefore, if the occupant has appropriated and sold public or private property that may not legitimately be appropriated by a military occupant, the original owner may reclaim that property without payment of compensation. It derives from the jus posiliminii, of Roman law

Roman law

Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...

. The codification of large areas of international law have made postliminium to a great extent superfluous though. It may either be seen as a historical concept, or a term generally describing the consequences to legal acts of an occupant after the termination of occupation.

Further reading

Woltag, J.-C., 'Postliminium' in Wolfrum, R. (ed) Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford University Press 2009). }

External links

• Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace, the Right of Postliminium