I bought my friend a lordship at Sealand one year for Christmas. I'd been thinking about the Scotland thing first, but decided I'd rather gift him a real title in an arguably fake country than a fake title in a real one.
I'm sure there are plenty of examples of unrecognized people living their lives in a "sovereign" way who could easily be slaughtered by their neighbors but the neighbors are just like fuck it, not worth losing a few of our guys to slaughter the unrecognized others. A slightly worse example is the Chechens, who gained a sort of unrecognized independence for several years until they became a bit more of a thorn to Russia who didn't really value their soldiers life much to begin with to worry much about the risks of putting them back down.
https://i.imgur.com/ZFPgRFl.png
Nothing there lol, otherwise I'd be in jail right now. Federal search warrant initiated by DHS. Obvi they faked the dog alert and visual 'evidence' because they were pissed I mentioned the constitution.
Example: Ukraine. They are being somewhat successful at defending themselves, and stomping the shlit out of Russia, at least so far.
Sure, maybe those have been battles, but who will win the war? Maybe Russia, but maybe Ukraine. I don't know, I can't see the future.
But so far, Ukraine has been stomping the heck out of Russia. We don't know if the territory will stay with Russia or not, so that map is of little consequence at this time.
I do remember them being taken to court and the UK court saying it had no jurisdiction over Sealand.
What I found now:
Shortly after this declaration, Sealand faced its first test of sovereignty when the Royal Navy approached the structure to evict the Sealanders. Convinced of his sovereignty, Bates fired a series of defensive warning shots at the ships to protect the structure and was subsequently summoned into British court on criminal charges for his actions.1 l Arguing that the British court lacked jurisdiction over Sealand, Bates was successful in having the charges against him dropped." This victory reinforced Sealand's claim of sovereignty.
> Parliament has no doubt the power to make it an offense for a British subject to have a firearm with intent to endanger life in Istanbul or Buenos Aires, or where have you, but I do not think it has done so. The Firearm Act of 1937 seems to me to be clearly an Act intended to operate only within the ordinary territorial limits and also no doubt on British ships. Breaches of its provisions, even by British subjects, outside those limits are not in my judgment intended to be cogniable by the British Court.
The court was not specifically saying that it had no jurisdiction over Sealand, more that British laws normally only apply within 3nm of the coast (at the time, this is now extended to 12nm) and on British ships unless otherwise specifically stated. As Sealand was more than 3nm of the coast, and there was no specific provision that the law under which the guy was charged should apply outside the normal territorial limits of the UK.
It's part of the normal checks and balances system in the UK that the judiciary hold the legislature accountable for what they actually write, not what they intend.
It was a loophole which has since been closed by extending the territorial waters of the UK, rather than a recognition of Sealand as a sovereign nation.
Maybe.
The first part sounds a bit British nationalistic "parliament cannot be bound", and could indeed make laws about the minimum amount of snow that must fall in the Sahara desert.
So it was not counted as British land, nor a British ship. That's interesting.
The extension of territorial waters explicitly cannot do so to aquire more land. E.g. if Sealand had been a natural Island then unambigiously this 3->12nm extension would NOT make it British.
So the ruling said that it's not a ship. And it's not British land. If it's "land" at all then it did not become British land by the territorial extension.
But I also agree: It did not recognize sovereignity. It narrowed down the options in the future for courts (or parliament) justifying why it's not sovereign, though.
Though of course parliament could decree that the moon is green and sealand is British, and for the latter no other country would care. And that's really all that matters.
I read it slightly differently, they're saying a law could apply to a British subject overseas. For example as a British citizen you can be prosecuted in the UK for abusing a minor in any country - the jurisdiction is over you as a British citizen. However this isn't the case with isn't a feature of the The Firearm Act of 1937 which I guess only applies on British land and ships.
I take that to mean that the judge didn't feel that Sealand counted as British land or a British Shop and that the law didn't apply to British subjects overseas so in this case the crime was outside the scope of the law.
Perfectly reasonable way to read it, and maybe even how it's intended. I'm just pointing out that because parliament cannot be bound this means that anything and everything can become law.
So pointing out that it could become law by act of parliament to apply to British subjects anywhere doesn't mean much, because anything could be, British subjects involved or not.
This is as opposed to e.g. the US, where ordinary laws are actually bound by a constitution.
For the question of "is it British land" this is just "well, what is a country?", and comes down to "is it recognized as such by other nations?".
But nobody cares, so this will probably never be settled, and more likely end is that it falls apart by natural forces before it's settled in law. It's just not worth bothering parliament with this.
Unless the "sovereign" state of Sealand decides to lease out some of its land to the Russian military. Very quickly this will be settled, in the UK's favour. Settled legally? Well… by whose law?
> the judge didn't feel that Sealand counted as British land or a British Shop and that the law didn't apply to British subjects overseas so in this case the crime was outside the scope of the law.
Right. As written it seems that the law did not apply.
Actually the full judgement[0] is a bit clearer that that's exactly what how it's intended, but not in a jingoistic nationalist way.
One argument in this case was that there ARE crimes which are justiciable in the UK which are not committed within the UK or its territorial water, (treason, murder, bigamy, and offences committed on British-flagged ships on the High Seas, I think child molestation was mentioned by OP, but not in this court case—I'm not sure about this one, although it wouldn't surprise me if it's on the list).
So it is both possible and precedented for parliament to pass laws which, when broken, would fall under the jurisdiction of British courts even if the offence itself did not take place in the UK. But this isn't one of those cases.
> This is as opposed to e.g. the US, where ordinary laws are actually bound by a constitution.
The UK also has a constitution, it's just not consolidated in a single document. Parliament is bound by a variety of restrictions on what they can and can't do in terms of passing laws. However, it is, of course, possible to change these restrictions, or pass the law despite them, similarly to how it is possible to amend the US constitution, and pass a law which is later found to be unconstitutional by SCOTUS.
I believe similarly to the US, any law can be passed, and if its constitutionality is challenged, then there is a Supreme Court who will pass a judgement, and so apart from the simplicity of having a consolidated and codified US constitution, there's no major difference between the two countries in that respect—any law found to be unconstitutional will be considered void.
Agree completely though that basically no-one cares enough to try to sort this out.
I'm not even sure what mechanism there would be for doing so? To actively police Sealand until a crime occurs, so that the perpetrator could be arrested and brought for trial to see if the judge would consider Sealand under their jurisdiction this time?
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070302111533/http://www.seanha...
Most would probably not care about the former either.
Italy went further and declared formal war on the new country.
It is the only war Italy has won.