Territorial Law is a branch of constitutional law, which studies the sovereign rights that the State exercises over its territory, which basically includes: the land surface, maritime space and air space.

The objective of territorial law is to study the various legal aspects that concern the State with respect to its territory, legal norms of domestic law, which in many cases are subject to norms of international law.

Territorial Law has as its legal framework, in the first instance, what is established in the Constitution and then in the laws and ordinances, both national and local, intended for the ordering and organization of the territory over which the State exercises its power and sovereignty.

Contenido

El territorio como concepto político, se define como el espacio geográfico delimitado en el que se encuentra asentada la población. Dentro de esta concepción, es componente esencial e indispensable para la conformación de un Estado, puesto que sin un territorio que gobernar, no existiría.

Constituent elements

The territory of a State is made up of:

• - The earth's surface, which includes the subsoil, and the waters and beds of national rivers and lakes (or any aqueous space that is within the limits of the territory itself).

• - The maritime space, which covers internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and the bed and subsoil of the underwater areas (continental shelf).

• - Airspace, which includes the portion of the earth's atmosphere, both on the land surface and on the maritime space, which make up the national territory.

Within the maritime space, archipelagic waters are also considered when the State has island territory, or in the case of an island country or archipelagic State, whose sovereignty extends: to the waters enclosed by the archipelagic baselines "Baseline (law of the sea)") and to the airspace that extends over them, to their bed and subsoil, and to their resources.