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Webinar: Lincoln, Napoleon and Hitler Walk Into A Bar: Does the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare Require Signatory Countries To Open Courts To Claims For Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art?
The Hague Conventions, The Lieber Code and International Law
**Program hosted in (ET) Time Zone**
Do statutory bars to Holocaust victim families recovering looted artworks violate the international law of war? Our speaker explores this question. Article 47 of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions on Land Warfare forbids pillage. Article 56 requires “legal proceedings” for seizures of artworks. Following World War II, using statutes of limitations and acquisitive prescription, many Hague Convention signatories closed their courts to Nazi-era claims to recover pillaged and seized artworks. Closing courts to “legal proceedings’ violates the Hague Convention, defeats its goal of taking the profit motive out of wars of aggression, and rewards concealment and laundering stolen property. In the United States, Congress passed the Holocaust Victims Redress Act of 1998 (the “HVRA“) to apply the 1907 Hague Convention to claims involving Nazi looted art. The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (the “HEAR Act”) reopened U.S. courts and extended statutes of limitations by six years for past and future claims to artworks and cultural property lost as a result of Nazi persecution. Our speaker urges that the U.S. approach of re-opening the courts is required by the Hague Convention. Hague Convention compliance could be best achieved by a Directive from the European Parliament requiring re-opening courts to such claims.
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Presented by the Federal Bar Association’s Veterans and Military Law Section and International Law Section.
About the Presenters
Raymond J. Dowd is a managing partner of the law firm Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP in New York City. He acts as problem-solver for businesses, not-for-profits and individuals confronting potential investigations, litigation, arbitration and mediation. He serves as lead counsel in high-stakes litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts in disputes often centered on foreign law issues. He has obtained multimillion-dollar intellectual property judgments, recovered Nazi-looted art, and scored landmark trusts and estates decisions from Surrogate’s Court to the New York Court of Appeals (including removing the butler from the Estate of Doris Duke and representing the Republic of Germany in recovering an ancient Assyrian tablet for Berlin’s Pergamon Museum).
Ray authored Copyright Litigation Handbook in 2006 and updates it annually with decisions focusing on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He has testified as a New York law expert before London’s High Court. He teaches trial advocacy through use of statistics, data and charts and use of expert witnesses at his alma mater Fordham Law School. In 2019 he received the Roger J. Goebel International Alumni Award. Current scholarship focuses on the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare and its impact on art restitution claims.
Ray’s past volunteer service includes National Arts Club, Board of Governors and Chair, Audit Committee, Federal Bar Association, General Counsel and Board of Directors, Southern District of New York President, Network of Bar Leaders President, American Foreign Law Association President. He is a Fellow of the New York Bar and the Federal Bar Foundations. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Fordham Law Alumni Association, the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center and the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France.
He is conversant in French and Italian.
Registration
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- Live Broadcast | FBA Member: $0
- Live Broadcast | Nonmember: $95
- On-Demand Broadcast | FBA Member: $50
- On-Demand Broadcast | Nonmember: $95
CLE
Please note: CLE for this webinar has not been pre-approved.
MyLaw and the FBA will seek 1.0 General CLE credit hours in 60-minute states, and 1.2 General CLE credit hours in 50-minute states.
Posted credit hours are estimated and subject to respective state approval and rounding rules. CLE qualifications vary by state/jurisdiction.