Supreme Court rules Germany can't be sued in Nazi Art case

[NewYorkExpress]

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/03/963688893/supreme-court-says-germany-cant-be-sued-in-nazi-era-art-case

The 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.

.....

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?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If Breyer and Kagan supported this it was probably the right call. I imagine that couldn't have been easy for them.

[brucejoel99]

The crimes in question occurred in another country & affected non-U.S. citizens, so it makes perfect legal sense that there's no right in this case to seek compensation in the American courts when it was a foreign government which seized foreign property without just compensation. Nothing stopping the plaintiffs from seeking compensation in the German courts, though.

[politicallefty]

I'm generally not supportive of the concept of US jurisdiction across the world. It seems like this decision abided by the letter of the law and was entirely correct.

[Idaho Conservative]

How would such a judgement be enforced anyhow?

[Donerail]

How would such a judgement be enforced anyhow?

You could enforce a US judgment against their assets in the United States. This is often tricky, b/c most of the judgments people get in the US against foreign states are against countries like Iran and Syria that don't maintain a lot of assets in the US, and there are some protections for things like embassies. In this case, it should be fairly easy — congratulations on your new Volkswagen.

[Idaho Conservative]

How would such a judgement be enforced anyhow?

You could enforce a US judgment against their assets in the United States. This is often tricky, b/c most of the judgments people get in the US against foreign states are against countries like Iran and Syria that don't maintain a lot of assets in the US, and there are some protections for things like embassies. In this case, it should be fairly easy — congratulations on your new Volkswagen.

Well Volkswagen is a private German company.