48 U.S.C. § 1501
Section 1501 · Lands in Territories
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 2 court decisions — leading case State Ex Rel. Cartwright v. Hillcrest Investments, Ltd. (1981)
Most recently applied in Question Submitted by: The Honorable Brent Howard, Oklahoma State Senate, District 38 (February 2024)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
No alien or person who is not a citizen of the United States, or who has not declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States in the manner provided by law shall acquire title to or own any land in any of the Territories of the United States except as hereinafter provided. The prohibition of this section shall not apply to cases in which the right to hold or dispose of lands in the United States is secured by existing treaties to citizens or subjects of foreign countries, which rights, so far as they may exist by force of any such treaty, shall continue to exist so long as such treaties are in force, and no longer.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Codification
Section was formerly classified to section 71 of Title 8, Aliens and Nationality.