Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Boundaries

Natural or artificial separations or divisions between adjoining properties that show their limits.

Boundaries are used to establish private and public ownership by determining the exact location of the points at which one piece of land is distinguishable from another. They are also used to mark the functional and jurisdictional limits of political subdivisions. For example, in the United States, boundaries are used to define villages, towns, cities, counties, and states.

The setting of boundaries is a characteristic of the modern era of history during which centralized states emerged that required both protection against attacks and definition of their populations. Historically, natural objects such as rivers and mountains served this purpose. Accurate determination of boundaries requires surveying and cartography, which were not widely used until the early nineteenth century. But even in the late twentieth century, with...