The power to make laws for ‘peace, order and good government’ was widely recognised. Section 15 of New Territories Land Court Ordinance 1900 provided: ‘All land in the New Territories is hereby declared to be the property of the Crown . . ‘. It deemed the occupiers to be trespassers unless their occupation was authorised by the Crown. This replaced Chinese customary tenure, which was assignable and heritable. One of the issues in the case was whether that customary interest survived so that a developer whose land was being acquired for a price below its market value, could rely on it. It was held that the land vested in the Crown under that wide declaratory power.
Citations:
[1985] AC 733
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Chagos Islanders v The Attorney General, Her Majesty’s British Indian Ocean Territory Commissioner QBD 9-Oct-2003
The Chagos Islands had been a British dependent territory since 1814. The British government repatriated the islanders in the 1960s, and the Ilois now sought damages for their wrongful displacement, misfeasance, deceit, negligence and to establish a . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Constitutional
Updated: 12 May 2022; Ref: scu.186647