the rights of a squatter to remain on the public land he has occupied.
- 1883  The infernal row you are all making up there about grievances, monopolies, squatter's rights, etc., has together with your last spring's floods and Winnipeg speculations, cooled off the Manitoba fever prevalent in Ontario last year.
- 1954  "Squatter's rights" have been recognized in America since the early days of settlement simply because the urge to acquire land drove people way beyond surveyed boundaries.
- 1961  They . . . tried to enforce squatters' rights and fought the parcelling out of what they regarded as their own land to the United Empire Loyalists.