This paper, with a focus on the status of tsunami disaster victims affected by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake, investigates into the status of private property rights in facing with the reviving legal instrumentalism in Japan, under the campaign of land law reform for the elimination of “land without identifiable owners” in the name of facilitating the disaster recovery, by means of the “special zone” method or the designation of lawless areas where the normal time law is excluded, with the particularly targeted area for such exclusion being the constitutional requirements of due process and fair compensation in public taking. Under the extraordinary setting of absolute majority of conservative party at the National Diet in the aftermath of the 2011 great disaster, legislations in Japan during this decade have been characterized by a manifestation of neo-liberal policy, driving the entire Japanese legal system into a corner. Facts observed in present Japanese society are not different from those observed in other authoritarian regimes in Asia, including the phenomenon of “land grabbing” by the governmental projects, which Asia once experienced a century ago for the colonial land enclosure by “wasteland management.”

Government is the custodian of the most critical (and limited) factor of production, namely, land. Assuring the security of tenure, arbitrating disputes, and facilitating the transfer or sales of titles renders the land market more efficient and less volatile, attracting investors and promoting sustainable urban development. Land tenure security is also a critical government service that has repercussions on agricultural productivity, housing development, business investment, and the development of urban areas. However, land administration is mired in corruptive practices, elite capture, and inefficient allocation. Globally, only 24% of rural areas are mapped (46 in urban areas), with approximately the same percentage registered, that is, 22%. In Africa, only about 14% of rural land is formally recorded in a public register. Land tenure security can take a variety of forms depending on national regulatory frameworks that allocate land and specify its use. Success stories include transferable user certificates in China and individual land titles in Rwanda. Systematic evaluation of the evidence on tenure programs demonstrates that improved tenure security increases agricultural output (40% on average), increases urban land values (25% on average), and increases household welfare (15% on average). Other observed country-specific benefits include additional years of schooling, better academic performance, access to credit, reforestation, and improved household nutrition. The costs of establishing tenure security in Sub-Saharan Africa include the separate costs of rural (US$ 3 billion) and urban (US$ 2.2 billion) land registration; the cost of digitizing land registries and information to improve efficiency and transparency (US$ 880 million), the cost of strengthening institutions and systems to resolve land disputes and manage expropriations (US$ 960 million) over a ten-year implementation period, and land administration operations and land records maintenance over 30 years (US$ 64 billion). The net present value (8%) of costs is US$ 21.7 billion for rural land tenure and US$ 5.3 billion for urban areas. The benefits of rural land registration were based on the observed 15% household wealth effect noted in the literature. The net present value (8%) of a 30-year benefits stream is US$ 396 billion. The benefit–cost ratio of completing and modernizing land registration and improving land administration coverage and effectiveness in rural Sub-Saharan Africa is 18. The benefits of urban land registration were based on the average 25% increase in property values observed in the literature. Using housing prices for the 20 largest, Sub-Saharan African countries, the net present value (8%) of the benefits over a 30-year period is US$ 237 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 45 when the average housing price is used. When the population-weighted housing price is used, benefits are valued at US$ 160 billion, yielding a benefit–cost ratio of 30.

This paper examines discretionary decision making in a property law context: the statutory power to correct a mistaken entry on the land register. This discretionary power has importance as an occasion when the allocation of property occurs without fixed rules but is put into the control of the court without guidance on content or goals. The case-law is studied using legal empirical analysis. The judicial approach is described and findings are analysed. The paper relates the conclusions to doctrinal and policy debates in land registration and discusses how the judicial input advances understanding of the registration system as an integrated whole.

When the Land Registration Act 2002 first came into force, the prevailing academic view was that it had created a system of “title by registration”, such that, where someone (B) is mistakenly registered as owner of another person's (A's) land, he acquires a good title (notwithstanding the mistake) that can validly be conveyed to someone else (C). The thesis of this article is that, whilst the logic of the “title by registration” principle might be conceptually attractive, it has proven to be unworkable in practice, is questionable as a matter of policy, and – looking to the future – ought to be abandoned in favour of a more subtle legislative scheme for resolving A-B-C disputes.

This paper explores the relationship between local lineage social structure and the workings of tax registration in Qing China, through a case study providing documentary evidence of a level of precision that enables us to go beyond the findings of previous scholarship. In the first instance, it reconstructs a tax dispute where implications of the registration system come into play, based on rare records made by the taxpayers themselves. In doing so, it shows that (a) the registered “acreage” of land was in fact unrelated to any actual land whatsoever; (b) tax collection ceased to be able to rely on knowledge of the terrain and had to depend on knowing the social groups that could be held responsible for payment, while the cohesion and internal differentiation of these social groups was (in turn) underpinned by tax collection and registration; and (c) since the registration system did not permit the government to keep track of actual landholding, property rights had to be secured at the local community level. In conclusion, an attempt is made to speculate on the extent to which this specific case contributes to our knowledge of local social structure, the interactions between localities and the government, and the property regime of Qing China overall.