https://www.npr.org/2021/02/03/963688893/supreme-court-says-germany-cant-be-sued-in-nazi-era-art-caseThe U.S. Supreme Court sided with Germany on Wednesday in a dispute over artworks obtained by the Nazis from German Jewish collectors in 1935. The court unanimously rejected a lower court ruling that had allowed the heirs of the onetime owners to proceed with their claim that the sale had been coerced.
At the center of the case is the Guelph Treasure, one of the most famous collections of medieval artifacts in existence. Now valued at $250 million, it has long been on display in a German state museum in Berlin.
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Writing for the unanimous court, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that in a case like this one involving international law as well as domestic law, "We do not look to the law of genocide ... we look to the law of property." And under both U.S. law and international law, a taking of property can be "wrongful" only where a country deprives an "alien," a foreigner, of property.
Wednesday's decision involved the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which establishes the rules of the road for how the Unites States treats other countries in litigation. As Roberts put it, the FSIA has long recognized that U.S. "law governs domestically but does not rule the world." And he pointedly observed that the U.S. might well balk too if some of its historically bad behavior — say slavery or the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II — were punished by courts in other countries.
Do you agree with the decision? Are you surprised it was unanimous?
