In a recent post on the Fishing with Corn or Maize thread Sequent brought up an interesting point, that there might be parts of the Territorial U.S. where certain laws do not apply:
Without making you follow the thread, the link takes you to the CIA World Factbook which describes the “Country” of Palmyra Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, about half way between Hawaii and American Samoa. Its pretty small but we own it. The Kingdom of Hawaii took it over in 1862, but somehow, when Hawaii became a state, Palmyra did not get included.
So here’s the question for the Straight Dope American Geography experts out there. How much of the non-States does the United States actually own or control? What laws do or don’t apply there? And as U.S. citizens, what rights or protections do we or don’t we have?
Is it free for all time as Sequent suggests? Or is there some rule of law at work?
And while we’re in Oceana - who is the best Tuna?
No, scratch that. That’s too much for one question.
The US owns one acre of ground at Runnymede in the UK for the JFK memorial. The inscription there says, “'This acre of English ground was given to the United States of America by the people of Britain in memory of John F. Kennedy.” See this. I would assume, though, that the area is pretty much run under UK law and since no one actually lives there, it’d be rare for anything to come up.
Don’t we technically own the property where an embassy is situated? Under international law, an embassy is considered sovereign territory of the country. It’s hard to visualize that being the case without the country owning the property.
See matt_mcl’s islands with split sovereignty thread, where this identical question was raised, and Cliffy resolved it with an exceptionally clear statement of international law (which, of course, doesn’t usually lend itself to anything remotely like “exceptionally clear” statements).
