| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 103 === In Taiwan, an ancestor worship guild refers to a lineage association providing services for ancestor worship. In addition to this formal purpose, the guilds also carry out several additional tasks, such as providing assistance for family members, management and development of their properties. Over many years of social change, the guilds have become regarded as a type of non-profit organization as well.
In recent years, many issues concerning ancestor worship guilds have arisen, including geographic dispersion of descendants, lack of management, ambiguity of obligations and rights, land vacancy, and inconsistency in land use. Conflicts continue to arise between property owners and the public interest while the guilds’ land and buildings are infringed upon by the exercise of public power, such as in cadastral clearance or urban planning. The Act for Ancestor Worship Guild, which came into effect on July 1st, 2008, has addressed, but not fully resolved the problems concerning the nature, establishment, and authorities concerned with ancestor worship guilds, as well as the rights of successors in the family. Therefore, the differences between operations relying on traditional customs and those relying on current regulations warrant further examination.
From the perspective of compensation for damages, the government should pay fair compensation for exercises of public power such as expropriation or land use control when its exercise constitutes the guilds’ Sonderopfer (special sacrifice) which goes beyond their social obligations. The definition of damages and methods of compensation were not properly stipulated in previous regulations and administrative practices, and the administrative authorities have continued to follow earlier interpretative rules even after the passage of the Act for Ancestor Worship Guild, resulting in lax planning and implementation of cadastral clearance of the guilds’ lands. Consequently, it is necessary to further investigate the legal basis of ancestor worship guilds to determine whether they deserve fair compensation, and whether they should be considered as separate cases from the protection of other private property rights, given that these infringements reflect a specific trend in the exercise of public power.
The focus of this paper is to characterize the ancestor worship guilds’ property rights and apply a theory of compensation for their damages. Relying on a premise that ancestor worship guilds should be properly and legally evaluated, the study discusses the violations of the guilds’ rights for public purposes and the mechanism of compensation for damages in particular cases. Finally, several practical issues sourced from real cases related to the compensation for the guilds’ damages are presented, with comments and suggestions in order to shed light on the significance of applying this theory, and to provide solutions to the controversies surrounding compensation for the guilds’ damages.
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