The Measure, the Date, and the Device: statutory form in the instruments verified

This installment analyzes the form of the statutory texts that fix compensation for compulsory acquisition, and nothing else. Four tables classify the instruments verified for this issue's regional installments: thirty-five measure rules (what the text directs be paid), twenty-six date rules (the point as at which value is taken), thirty-one device rows (the mechanism by which a text controls the influence on value of the expropriation or of a connected public project) and twenty-six remainder rules for partial takings. Of the device rows twenty-two are disregards, four date-fixing and three use-restriction, with one one-way ratchet (Taiwan) and one conferral (Poland); six national systems yielded no device. On the remainder, six rows permit set-off of betterment, two cap it at fifty percent, one prohibits it (Japan), eleven make depreciation compensable and six extend the taking at the owner's demand. A fifth section states, country by country, how far the law of the level below the national one shapes real estate valuation; it is a working summary and, unlike the tables, has not been verified against official texts. The classes are closed and are the department's own; nothing is asserted about practice, agreement between systems or causes. Of 118 rows, 98 rest on primary official sources, and every quantified claim is recomputed from a companion Prolog fact base reproduced in an appendix. China, with Hong Kong, is among the jurisdictions omitted because their governments are authoritarian and their court records are difficult to access; Vietnam, the Central Asian states and Iran are not yet surveyed.