[ad. F. exterritorialité (in Littré): see prec. and -ITY.] The condition of being considered outside the territory of the state in which (a person) resides, and therefore of not being amenable to its laws. Also EXTRATERRITORIALITY.
The privilege of exterritoriality belongs by international law to ambassadors and their families; stipulations according it to various other classes of persons have been granted by certain Asiatic powers in treaties with European nations.
[1756. Rutherforth, Institutes, II. II. ix. § 20. 603. That as by one fiction of positive law an ambassador is considered as the representative of the nation which sends him, so by another like fiction of the same law he is considered as if he was out of the territory, though he is in it.]
1836. Wheaton, Internat. Law, I. 273. The fiction of exterritoriality has been invented, by which the minister though actually in a foreign country, is supposed still to remain within the territories of his own sovereign.
1859. Lord Elgin, in Times, 17 March, 5/2. The system of exterritoriality which Christian nations have deemed it necessary for the interests and protection of their subjects to establish in China.
1878. W. B. Lawrence, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVII. 40. The United States courts have always been scrupulous in recognizing the exterritoriality of public ships.
attrib. 1887. H. Knollys, Life in Japan, 317. That everlastingly sore point, the ex-territoriality question.
