A Path to Legitimate Sovereignty for Micronations

By Swena, Founder of the Technocratic Republic of Aethodia

Conceptualized on 2025 July 4

Written on 2025 July 9

Background

The typical micronation declares sovereignty over land they have no legal right to declare sovereignty over. This is true regardless of whether they possess title to the land they are claiming, because that title almost never confers any transfer of sovereignty; and, indeed, in many cases does not even imply true ownership. This means that typical micronational claims are at best just Free-Speech roleplay and at worst illegal secession and (in the event of claims over land to which the micronation's actors lack title) colonization/conquest.

In this document, I am going to focus on a few different macronational systems of property ownership. Now, granted: I am neither a lawyer nor a legal scholar (though, to be absolutely fair, probably few of either is particularly well-versed in the systems of very many countries outside their own). Nevertheless, I will attempt to give sufficient overview for me to argue my insight.

Please note that this document in no way represents formal legal advice.

Common Law

In jurisdictions using Common Law, you typically own land via fee simple, which is Anglo-Norman for "simple fief". In essence: You are simply given title to hold, bequeath, etc a fief that ultimately belongs to the sovereign. This is why eminent domain is justifiable: You don't literally own the land that you own, so you are not sovereign over it.

Civil Law

In jurisdictions using Civil Law, ownership descends entirely from the State. So you do literally own your own land, but only because the state says you do, and the State can (in principle) rescind (expropriate) that at any time for any reason, so long as the State has not enacted laws restricting its own powers.

Chinese Law

You temporarily rent topsoil rights from the State, and never actually own anything. You have to renew this periodically, or the State kicks you off of its land.

Natural Ownership

With this all elucidated, a micronationalist reading this may be thinking, "What now?"

Well, there's a hint to what in the "Civil Law" section: this idea that property ownership descends entirely from the State, an idea which is entirely and demonstrably false. Even some non-human primates own things [source], and even children as young as 2 have some abstract understanding of ownership [source]. Ownership pre-dates States, and it pre-dates humans, too. The state can declare that a favorite stick de facto owned by a monkey is, in fact, de jure owned by John, some guy who has never touched the stick. The State's declaration and then dissemination of title to the stick does not actually transfer ownership thereof: The State has to forcibly redistribute the stick to John; and until that such a time, natural ownership, to all observers, clearly remains with the monkey. For, you see, the ownership of property is a thing of Natural Law, not a legal fiction declared a priori by States; and the fact that States regularly utilize coercion and force to override or change ownership does not change this fact. We can see the effects of this whenever States act against natural ownership: A man owning a property that has been in his family for generations becomes outraged, sometimes to the point of armed rebellion, when the State attempts to seize his land by force per the legal right of the sovereign to exercise eminent domain over those properties which that sovereign owns ultimate title to. Everyone around witnessing this feels that it is unjust that the man's ancestral home has been stolen (even though it was in exchange for some compensation), and quietly hopes to themselves that such a fate should never befall them. Even returning to the example of the monkey and its favorite stick: Someone stealing that stick would to any onlooker appear as theft, even though the monkey possesses no legal title to that stick. This is because we all have a deeply-ingrained concept of property ownership written within us by our biologies, developed over millions of years: a form of Natural Law.

The State may claim that we only own the land by "fee simple"; it may say that only those titles it, itself, recognizes then represent true ownership; but both of these are legal fictions that ignore the reality of Natural Law, and this is further-evidenced by the fact that the moment a State ceases to exist (and all titles therefrom are therefore invalidated), everyone defaults again to that natural idea that one truly owns their property, and accordingly ex-titleholders continue to own their property so long as they can defend it: a situation which is absolutely no different than when under a State: Your property remains yours so long as you can defend it; it's just that your odds of successfully defending against a State are zero. Nothing has actually changed regardless of whether a State is or is not present. And even in the presence of a State claiming otherwise, the vast majority of people naturally assume that their titles to their properties confer true/full ownership, because the legal nitty-gritties contrived by States are artificial and unnatural, and because we have these innate, cross-cultural, cross-species concepts of ownership. The simple fact of the matter is that, when a state grants you de facto time-unlimited ownership to a property, it has also granted you true de jure ownership over that property by right of Natural Law, regardless of what the State claims to the contrary. Stated differently: when you purchase property under fee simple or in a Civil Law system, you have de facto purchased natural ownership of that property, even if your title to that property insinuates that the State retains some abstract ultimate right to it.

(Note: It is important to differentiate ownership from title: the former is a natural fact, and the latter is a legal contrivance that documents the ownership for the State. You own your land even without a deed; the deed is just what confirms that ownership for the State which regulates and protects your land.)

Natural Sovereignty

In the absence of a State, owners of land naturally possess sovereignty over their land, and we have seen this play out repeatedly throughout history on frontiers or following a collapse of central authority, wherein landowners act as de facto independent kingdoms.

One example: When the Roman Empire fell, various tribes and strongmen vied for control, and many swore fealty to others — trading some of their independence for protection or other benefits. But within their estates, many landowners exercised tremendous control, a kind of mini-kingdom unto themselves. Over the centuries, the Church and centralizing States gradually reigned them in; but this was not an end to those landowners' natural rights as sovereigns over their own land, but an end to their ability to fully exercise those rights, contingent wholly on the continued dominance of their present overlord States.

(Which, to be clear, I am not at all complaining that landowners are not currently independent kingdoms unto themselves; I am just arguing that the only thing keeping them from acting as independent countries is the strength of the State presiding over them, and that the loss or weakening of that State allows landowners to resume exercising fuller control over their land, potentially to such an extent as to act as States themselves.)

Because of this, we can argue that, in essence, landowners comprise in some sense their own miniature States, which are mostly latent so long as Stately functions are fulfilled by an overlord.

Implications

We earlier established that, by right of Natural Law, owners of land continue to possess an absolute natural right to their land limited only de facto by overlord States' willingnesses and abilities to forcibly override that right. We also established, descriptively, that landowners act as independent States without some greater State to limit them. With these givens, we can state that owners of land existing under an overlord State accordingly continue to possess a latent sovereignty, even if they are de facto not fully utilizing it. Regardless of whether we consider that latent sovereignty to be consumed by an overlord State (yielding residual sovereignty) or merely suppressed by it (so, true latent sovereignty), there always (except in the case of totalitarianism) remains some amount of sovereignty which is not used by the overlord State and which can be delegated by a landowner to another.

This is where things become relevant to micronations: a micronation can legitimately acquire territory by legal right of Natural Law simply by receiving oaths of fealty from landowners, as landowners in so doing are delegating (not bequeathing) the exercise of some or all of their natural sovereignty to that micronation.

This delegation is not inherently in violation of the laws of almost any country, to my knowledge; and, crucially, there is nothing about it that requires landowners to end any pre-existing fealties. In effect, a land under macronational control but also sworn to a micronation becomes a macro-micro condominium. (A condominium is a long-existing concept in international law, whereby two entities exercise joint control over a territory — see Abyei for a modern example.) In this case, because the macronation does not recognize the right of the micronation to preside over that territory and because the macronation possesses infinitely more power than the micronation, the micronation's sovereignty over the territory becomes wholly subsidiary to the macronation's: a kind of junior-senior condominium. So, a junior partner (a micronation) can act in accordance with its own laws over its territory so long as doing so does not conflict with the laws of the senior partner (a macronation), and of course only for so long as its natural-legal right to the territory remains (ie, so long as the landowner's oath of fealty to the micronation remains legally valid).

Practicalities

Oaths of fealty need not be recorded within macronational legal processes to be valid, as their source of legitimacy (natural law) arises from without. Likewise, deeds within a macronation need not be valid within a micronation, as they are just the macronation's way of documenting the ownership of property. A micronation must maintain its own legal infrastructure to document the ownership and transfer of property, and to record oaths of fealty.

Oaths of fealty must be made by the owners of land and explicitly include the land in that fealty. If the fealty is specified to be in perpetuity, then the micronation retains claim to that land even if the fealty-swearer loses ownership of this property; but without an owner actively in fealty to the micronation, the territory de facto passes out of the micronation's demesne.

A micronation basing its legitimacy on the natural rights of landowners who have sworn fealty to it has to reflect this in its own laws: It cannot adopt legal systems that deny the primacy of ownership (like Civil Law), but must instead treat ownership as a natural, pre-political fact. As well, it is very difficult for such a micronation to justify eminent domain, as that is inherently theft under this paradigm.

Some macronations, like the People’s Republic of China, grant a conditional right to rent and not de facto natural ownership; land in these macronations accordingly cannot be claimed by micronations per this paradigm.

Whether Common Law fee simple ownership confers de facto natural ownership is somewhat debatable, and different people may come to different conclusions.

Civil Law is, in my opinion, the clearest case in which title confers de facto natural ownership over land.

Outro

Micronations need not be imaginary or rebellious — They can find true legitimacy through a delegation of natural rights by landowners though sworn fealty; no secession required. Micronations lacking good traditional legal claim to sovereignty (ie, micronations that aren't Sealand, Seborga, etc) should consider reworking their legal codes to utilize this paradigm, since a solid, legitimate claim to sovereignty is foundational, and it is also usually a requirement for recognition.