What does «postliminio» mean in Spanish?
- Fiction of Roman law whereby prisoners of war, upon regaining their freedom, were reintegrated into the rights of citizens as if they had never been absent. Postliminium applied not only to persons but also to things.
- The right by virtue of which persons and things taken by an enemy in war are restored to their former state when they return to the power of the nation to which they belonged. The principle of postliminium, as part of public international law, is a specific version of the maxim ex injuria jus non oritur, which provides for the invalidity of all illegitimate acts that an occupier may have performed in a given territory after its recapture by the legitimate sovereign. Therefore, if the occupier has appropriated and sold public or private property that cannot be legitimately appropriated by a military occupier, the original owner can reclaim that property without payment of compensation, which derives from ius postliminii, from Roman law. However, the codification of large areas of international law has rendered postliminium largely superfluous. It may be viewed as a historical concept, or as a term describing in general the consequences of an occupier's legal acts after the termination of the occupation. Postliminium is a right recognized by nations and contributes essentially to mitigating the calamities of war. Thus, when property taken by the enemy is recaptured or rescued from him, by the other subjects or allies of the original owner, it does not become the property of the recaptor or rescuer, as if it were a new prize, but is returned to the original owner by right of postliminium, under certain conditions.