The Month in Retrospect: What Else Happened in January 2021

Good Old-fashioned Print: IPRax and RabelsZ

The first issue of this year’s IPRax is now out, and English-language abstracts can be found over at Conflict of Laws. The same is true for RabelsZ: Issue 1/2021 is available online, with abstracts on Conflict of Laws. The focus of RabelsZ is on private international law, whereas IPRax does have a couple of procedural articles on post-Brexit judicial cooperation, on cum-ex jurisdiction as well as on the Lugano Convention and the Brussels Regulation. Continue reading

Art Law: A Closer Look at the Proposed Art Restitution Act

The Bavarian State Government ealier this month presented the proposed Art Restitution Act (Kulturgut-Rückgewähr-Gesetz, KRG). Here is a closer look at how it is supposed to work, and what it is likely to achieve. Continue reading

“Restitution at Any Price” – A Rebuttal

Last week, Matthias Druba, the lawyer representing Peter Sachs in the Hans Sachs restitution case, responded in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) to the critique, published in the same paper, of the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) judgment in his client’s favour. Matthias Druba’s article was originally pay-walled, but has now become available in the free online version. Continue reading

“Restitution at Any Price” – A Critique of the Hans Sachs Judgment

In March 2012, the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) found in favour of the heir of Jewish art collector Hans Sachs in a restitution case. In my view it created a new precedent for restitution claims for a large class of lost art. The authors of an op-ed piece in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung agree, and heavily criticize the judgment of the Federal Supreme Court precisely for that reason – they call it “a wrongly decided and dangerous judgment”.

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