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Cultural Heritage Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Cultural Heritage Law

Casting Light On Cultural Property, John J. Costonis May 2000

Casting Light On Cultural Property, John J. Costonis

Michigan Law Review

Theorists of private property invite comparison to theorists of light. For centuries, the latter have debated whether light is best understood as a wave or as a photon. The rivalry has been intense because each hypothesis explains some characteristics of light very well, but others very poorly. Wave theory outstrips photon theory in explaining such phenomena as light's frequencies and diffraction patterns. But photon theory, which reduces light to a succession of particles, more effectively explains such subatomic phenomena as changes in an atom's orbital shell produced by the interaction of photons and electrons. Property theorists too can be viewed …


Who "Owns" A Cultural Treasure?, Jason Y. Hall May 2000

Who "Owns" A Cultural Treasure?, Jason Y. Hall

Michigan Law Review

Because of the thoughtfulness of its arguments, the range and depth of its presentation of specific cases, and the fairness with which it reveals, thinks through, and allows some validity to opposing points of view, Playing Darts with a Rembrandt is a valuable contribution to understanding which parties have, and should have, rights in key objects that comprise our collective heritage. That I am not persuaded by some of the specific arguments in the book in no way reduces my admiration for what it accomplishes.


Monuments To The Past In A Leveling Wind, Benjamin Means May 1999

Monuments To The Past In A Leveling Wind, Benjamin Means

Michigan Law Review

Early in the twentieth century, the Emperor Franz Joseph sponsored a monument to Hungary's history - a Millennium Monument containing statues of the country's heroes, as well as statues of the proud sponsor and his family (p. 5). When the communists took over in 1919, the statues of Franz Joseph and the rest of the Hapsburgs were dragged out of the Millennium Monument and replaced with more politically correct statuary (p. 8). Counterrevolutionaries, though, retook the country and reinstated the Hapsburg Statues in the Millennium Monument - until a later regime once again reshuffled the millennial display (pp. 9-10). Professor …


When It’S Ok To Sell The Monet: A Trustee-Fiduciary-Duty Framework For Analyzing The Deaccessioning Of Art To Meet Museum Operating Expenses, Jennifer L. White Feb 1996

When It’S Ok To Sell The Monet: A Trustee-Fiduciary-Duty Framework For Analyzing The Deaccessioning Of Art To Meet Museum Operating Expenses, Jennifer L. White

Michigan Law Review

Contrary to the view adopted by current codes of ethics, this Note argues that courts should approve a museum director's use of proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned art to meet operating expenses if the director's conduct comports with the duties of trustees under the law of trusts. Part I explores possible organizational structures for museums, including the charitable trust and the nonprofit corporation. Part I also compares the fiduciary duties of museum managers under trust and corporate law. Part II argues that courts should apply trust-law principles both to trustees of charitable trusts and directors of charitable corporations26 because …


Heritage Preservation As A Public Duty: The Abbé Grégoire And The Origins Of An Idea, Joseph L. Sax Apr 1990

Heritage Preservation As A Public Duty: The Abbé Grégoire And The Origins Of An Idea, Joseph L. Sax

Michigan Law Review

Public responsibility for the conservation of artifacts of historic or aesthetic value is now acknowledged everywhere. One way or another the state will ensure preservation of a Stonehenge or a Grand Canyon as well as a great many lesser cultural icons. We have names for such things - "heritage" and "cultural property" are two of them; "patrimony" is a European counterpart - but these words have no very specific meaning. Many, but by no means all, of the objects we feel constrained to protect are old. They include human artifacts as well as natural objects or places. Though it is …


American Indian Sacred Religious Sites And Government Development: A Conventional Analysis In An Unconventional Setting, Mark S. Cohen Feb 1987

American Indian Sacred Religious Sites And Government Development: A Conventional Analysis In An Unconventional Setting, Mark S. Cohen

Michigan Law Review

For centuries, American Indians have regarded specific lands as essential to their livelihood, government, culture, and religion. Congress and the courts have at times recognized the important relationship between tribes and their lands. Recognition has not always coincided with protection; during the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth century a series of governmental actions resulted in the tribes surrendering title and possession to many of their ancestral lands. Recently, however, American Indians have become increasingly active litigants in a variety of contexts. In one set of cases, Indians challenged government development projects on public lands, contending that because the …


The Trampas File, Joseph L. Sax Jun 1986

The Trampas File, Joseph L. Sax

Michigan Law Review

The Las Trampas reports are a refreshing dose of unsentimental discussion about community, culture, and tradition - subjects that are all too often submerged in bathetic wishful thinking.


Thinking About The Elgin Marbles, John Henry Merryman Aug 1985

Thinking About The Elgin Marbles, John Henry Merryman

Michigan Law Review

In the early nineteenth century, a British Lord removed much of the sculpture from the Parthenon and shipped it to England. Housed in the British Museum and named after their exporter, the Elgin Marbles have become a source of international controversy. The Greeks wish to see the Marbles returned to the Acropolis and their position is supported by a growing movement seeking the repatriation of cultural property. The Elgin Marbles are representative of the many works of art in the world's museums and private collections that could be subject to repatriation. Rejecting the emotional appeal of the Greek position, Professor …


Law And Aesthetics: A Critique And A Reformulation Of The Dilemmas, John J. Costonis Jan 1982

Law And Aesthetics: A Critique And A Reformulation Of The Dilemmas, John J. Costonis

Michigan Law Review

This Article both examines these consequences and explains why they have departed so frequently from the ostensible goals of the policies that produced them. It also surveys the principal legal dilemmas that attend aesthetic policy-making, which is sensitive to the values actually at stake in the type of "aesthetic" controversies that legal institutions are called upon to resolve in American society. The aesthetic controls addressed are those adopted in such areas as zoning, historic or environmental preservation, and urban design to shape the visual appearance of the built and natural environments. The content of the aesthetics idea is explored through …