Alternative methods of dispute resolution are an important resource in matters of cultural heritage in addressing the return, restitution, and repatriation of cultural property. The purpose of this article is to analyze the situations in which such methods might be preferred to the classical judicial means and to examine the problems that might arise.

The article is in two parts. The first part describes the actors as well as the current methods used for the restitution and return of cultural property. The second part explores the types of property that lend themselves to alternative dispute resolution techniques and lists the—often original—substantive solutions that have been used in practice.

Alternative methods of dispute resolution enable consideration of nonlegal factors, which might be emotional considerations or a sense of “moral obligation,” and this can help the parties find a path to consensus.

The Harvard Law School Symposium, “Spoils of War v. Cultural Heritage: The Russian Cultural Property Law in Historical Context,” was convened in February 2008 to bring together legal, historical, and other academic experts who might shed some light on the issues raised by Russia's 1998 law that essentially nationalized and declared Russian ownership of the great many works of art, books, and archives that were taken under orders by the Red Army to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The symposium was jointly sponsored by the Commission for Art Recovery, the Foundation for International Cultural Diplomacy, the Harvard Law School Arts and Literature Law Society, the Harvard Law School European Law Research Center, and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University.

On the occasion of the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage, 60 cultural heritage leaders from the preservation sector representing 30-two nations around the world shared experiences to address the sustainability of cultural heritage.

This article attempts to widen the debate on the removal of antiquities from the Ottoman Empire around 1800. The removals are often seen in an Anglo-French perspective with the result that other voices are erased, both those of the local populations and of other foreign observers. I show that objects that now neglected were once highly valued by both local inhabitants and collectors, and that their removals were repeatedly resisted. I suggest that a more subtle interaction occurred between collectors and the local populations than hitherto has been recognized. While the local populations were accused of various “superstitious” practices—often conveniently related to objects coveted by European collectors—I propose that the removers were not uninfluenced by these practices. By introducing testimonies from Swedish observers that were critical of the removals before such critiques became frequent, I also question the stereotype of a common European attitude toward the Ottoman Empire. I discuss how such critique was related to their status as third-party observers from a nation without power or museums. By investigating the arguments of both collectors and critics, I propose that many positions in the debate today were already present at the time of the removals. Following the history of a less famous object serves to highlight aspects of early European collecting and expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean that are often overlooked in the debate on ownership and restitution claims.

World War II was the occasion of the greatest theft, seizure, loss, and displacement of art treasures, books, and archives (“cultural items”) in history. Since then, governments and others have attempted to justify either their right to keep or to claim the return of the cultural items displaced as a result of the war and its aftermath. Such issues have intensified on the Eastern Front since the collapse of he Soviet Union and the opening of the Soviet secret depositories of long-hidden cultural items brought to Soviet territories at the end of the war. The principal protagonists in the public arena have been the Federal Republic of Germany (Germany), the Republic of Poland, and the Republic of Hungary, each claiming that the Russian Federation (Russia) has refused to negotiate adequately the return of cultural items displaced during and after the war that are now located in its territory.

Digital technologies have often been perceived as imperilling traditional cultural expressions (TCE). This angst has interlinked technical and sociocultural dimensions. On the technical side, it is related to the affordances of digital media that allow instantaneous access to information without real location constraints, data transport at the speed of light and effortless reproduction of the original without any loss of quality. In a sociocultural context, digital technologies have been regarded as the epitome of globalization forces—not only driving and deepening the process of globalization itself but also spreading its effects. The present article examines the validity of these claims and sketches a number of ways in which digital technologies may act as benevolent factors. It illustrates in particular that some digital technologies can be instrumentalized to protect TCE forms, reflecting more appropriately the specificities of TCE as a complex process of creation of identity and culture. The article also seeks to reveal that digital technologies—and more specifically the Internet and the World Wide Web—have had a profound impact on the ways cultural content is created, disseminated, accessed and consumed. It is argued that this environment may have generated various opportunities for better accommodating TCE, especially in their dynamic sense of human creativity.

The progress of countries is measured by their success in keeping hold of their culture and heritage, and I think Egypt is one of the very few countries in the world maintaining her cultural patrimony. We have been able, through a great effort led by Farouk Hosni, the Minister of Culture, to preserve and offer this heritage to the world as evidence of the magnificence of this great country, on whose land the most important civilization in existence was born. This civilization is in the heart of every human being on earth. The French newspaper, Le Figaro, published an article some time ago commending the quality of restoration and maintenance of Egyptian monuments, as well as new discoveries made by an Egyptian team.

Efforts to protect, if not revitalize, intangible cultural heritage in its traditional communities, cannot succeed without due attention to issues of ownership—cultural, environmental, intellectual, economic … “intellectual property” categories in a wisdom system such as that of the Baul of Bengal show that Traditional Knowledge, Customary Law and Traditional Cultural Expressions are inseparable “property,” and that “ownership” should be understood on traditional terms. Within such an integrated continuum, knowledge itself is not limited to it modern meaning.

Is it possible to bring about a true and equitable dialogue between radically antagonistic intellectual property universes—the modern one driven by profit, and traditional ones rooted in complex systems of multiple values?

To authorize the restitution by France of Maori heads to New Zealand and concerning management of collections.

The Russian Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation purports to establish the legal basis for the Russian state to hold permanent title to the vast majority of the cultural valuables removed from Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Russia claims that the cultural objects seized by the Soviet Union constitute “compensatory restitution” for the hundreds of thousands of cultural and artistic valuables seized or destroyed by the Nazis during the war. This article assesses the compatibility of the Russian claim with relevant international law. It does so by tracing the development of the international antiplunder legal regime. It then assesses the Russian claim with respect to three categories of cultural valuables, based on prewar ownership: property belonging to private persons and organizations, property belonging to nonenemy states, and property belonging to enemy states (Axis powers). “Compensatory restitution” does not exist as a category or principle in international law, so the analysis focuses on the legal concept that is most similar and therefore of potential relevance, restitution in kind. If restitution in kind is impermissible under international law, then the broader “compensatory restitution” is, with even greater force, also impermissible. The key finding is that international law does not permit “compensatory restitution,” nor does it permit unilateral seizures of cultural objects under some broader notion of compensation.

This article examines the main lines of Greek legislation on antiquities and on cultural heritage in general, in the course of its history, with an emphasis on the innovations and continuity of the current Law 3028 of 2002. It attempts to place the Greek case in the context of the relevant international experience and the broader debate about ownership of the past. It throws light on the relationship between the legal framework of antiquities and the formation and fostering of national identity in Greece, and on their close connection with the state, while at the same time criticizing the view that opposes a “cultural internationalist” approach to heritage to the “cultural nationalism” of Greece and other source countries.

Disputes over the retention of human remains in museum and other collections are further exacerbated by the common law's limited recognition of the human body and its parts as property. Equity has long recognised the rights of the personal representatives of the dead to possession of the corpse or its remains for decent disposal. This essay considers the possible application of equitable principles to applications for the return of human remains from museum and other collections.

First, the good news: Carpenter, Katyal, and Riley make a compelling case that the venerable concept of property—long defined primarily by such principles as transferability and rights of exclusion and control—should be broadened to encompass a robust ideal of stewardship. In doing so, “In Defense of Property” (henceforth, IDP) renders property more compatible with the indigenous view of things. This significant contribution to ongoing global debates about the protection of indigenous heritage will be of great interest to readers of the IJCP.

Built heritage conservation is not easily achievable through the market, as it involves use of urban space and thus opportunity cost. The problem is more serious if there is no government support. This is the case in Hong Kong, where both the market and the state are not favorable to built heritage conservation. However, in 2005, through a local voluntary organization, a built heritage of Hong Kong—the Tung Wah Coffin Home—was conserved, and the project won one local and one regional conservation award. While conservation of built heritage by the voluntary sector has been common among developed countries, it is new in Hong Kong. This article first situates the issue in a general political-economy perspective and then analyzes the case of the Tung Wah Coffin Home, in particular, in the context of Hong Kong. The purpose is to examine what this case tells us about the role of the voluntary sector and its relationship with the government in providing built heritage conservation.

This article discusses the Allied diplomatic and political impasse over restitution during and after World War II. The focus is on cultural restitution—the return of art, archives, and libraries looted by the Nazis. Serious Allied disagreements on general postwar policy for Germany inhibited the development of a coherent approach to the restitution of cultural property. Cultural restitution became lost in the maze of other greater political, economic, and ideological conflicts. Ultimately, the impasse was also fueled by the very complex issues involving cultural restitution itself. Issues including the scope of the entire effort, restitution in kind, returning property to refugees, and the fate of heirless Jewish property were intractable. The problems with cultural restitution reflected the clash of interests and ideologies. As a result, the four occupying powers had distinct approaches with radically differing results.

New Zealand claims for the return of preserved tattooed Maori heads held by foreign institutions have revisited complex legal, ethical, and cultural questions surrounding human remains in museum and other institutional collections worldwide. Recent legislation in France that facilitates the return of Maori heads in French museums represents a further stage in this ongoing story.

Author Stephenie Meyer forever altered the cultural existence of Quileute Indians when she wrote them into her Twilight novels. Now a veritable global phenomenon complete with books, movies, and affiliated merchandise, the Twilight series depicts young, male members of the tribe as vampire-fighting werewolves who ferociously defend a peace and territorial treaty made with local bloodsuckers. In reality, the Quileute Tribe consists of approximately 700 Indians, many of whom live on a remote reservation in the pacific Northwest, a tiny parcel of the once vast Quileute territory. Since Twilight's unprecedented international success, the Quileute have been overwhelmed with fans and entrepreneurs, all grasping, quite literally in some cases, for their own piece of the Quileute.

Sixty cultural heritage leaders from 32 countries, including representatives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe, and North America, gathered in October 2009 in Salzburg, Austria, to develop a series of practical recommendations to ensure optimal collections conservation worldwide. Convened at Schloss Leopoldskron, the gathering was conducted in partnership by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The participants were conservation specialists from libraries and museums, as well as leaders of major conservation centers and cultural heritage programs from around the world. As cochair Vinod Daniel noted, no previous meeting of conservation professionals has been “as diverse as this, with people from as many parts of the world, as cross-disciplinary as this.” The group addressed central issues in the care and preservation of the world's cultural heritage, including moveable objects (library materials, books, archives, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographic collections, art on paper, and archaeological and ethnographic objects) and immoveable heritage (buildings and archaeological sites).

The article is dedicated to the official decrees issued by Joseph Stalin in 1945 ordering the Soviet removal of cultural property from Eastern European and German territories occupied by the Red Army. As opposed to popular belief dominant today in Russia, such decrees were few. Preparation for the removal of cultural property from enemy countries had started before the fate of the war was decided. In 1943 on the request of academician Igor Grabar, the Bureau of Experts was established with the task of composing lists of so-called “eventual equivalents,” which Soviet officials wanted to receive after the war as “restitution in kind,” to compensate for the cultural losses of the USSR. The listed equivalents included art works from museums and private collections in the Axis countries. However, the projected provisions for “restitution in kind” were never approved by the Allies, in large part because during the last months of the war and immediately thereafter, the Soviet Union had already begun massive removal of cultural property from territories occupied by the Red Army. Different trophy brigades sent to the front lines were authorized or ordered to send back home whole collections of German museums and libraries. Only rarely were any of the ‘trophies’ labeled “compensation.”

In 2002, the California state legislature enacted a law temporarily suspending the statute of limitations in certain Holocaust art cases. In doing so, it removed a major procedural obstacle facing plaintiffs and effectively revived claims once considered time-barred. Seven years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held in von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena that this California law was unconstitutional under the foreign affairs doctrine, because it impermissibly intruded on the federal government's exclusive power to make and resolve war. In so holding, the Ninth Circuit became the first court in the United States to restrict the authority of the states to inject themselves into the realm of Holocaust art litigation.