APAD: Possession is nine points of the law
Meaning:
The person who has physical control of a property has an advantage over anyone
claiming rightful ownership.
Background:
Other variations (all considered correct): Possession is nine points of the law
(nine parts of the law, nine-tenths of the law etc).
Possession is nine-tenths of the law is not a law at all, merely a truism of
human nature - that the person who actually holds the item, land or whatever, is
in a stronger position than any claimant.
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I recently learned one meaning of the noun 'preemption': The right to purchase
something before others, especially the right to purchase public land that is
granted to one who has settled on that land. It invokes the picture of pioneers
pushing to the American West in the early days. After years of hard work,
bushwhacking, clearing, building, and farming, it was only fit to allow the
family to buy the land before anyone else.