The Culture in Cultural Property: Expanding Legal Advocacy

Abstract

The stream of cultural property wrongfully taken from developing countries continues in part as a result of the exclusive use of property-based legal strategies in efforts for its return. Advocates for cultural heritage protection have done much to reveal the shadow market of cultural property — elucidating the illicit traffic of items of cultural property from source countries to museums, collectors and auction houses. Because of its strict, transactional focus, property-based remedies may not be the exclusive mechanism for assessing the social, economic and civic harms associated with cultural property dispossession. This paper will: (1) provide general commentary on the history and practice of property law in the United States, and (2) propose tort theory as a possible solution for advocates seeking strategies for the repatriation of cultural property.