Cultural heritage: property, personhood, and international returns

This thesis focuses on international claims for return of corporeal movable cultural heritage and the problems potential claimants face when seeking return of their heritage, particularly when resort is had to the traditional rules of private international law. It examines the difficulty of defining cultural heritage within a proprietary context and looks to the principle of legal personhood as an alternative way to govern claims for return. To draw inspiration, it examines the attribution of personhood to environmental objects, and looks to Bumper Development Corporation v The Metropolitan Police and Ors ([1991] 1 WLR 1362) in terms of what attribution of personhood might mean for extraterritorial recognition in the context of private international law. While the force of attributing legal personhood to objects of cultural heritage is largely rhetorical, it helps to change domestic attitudes surrounding the protection of cultural heritage. In particular, viewing cultural heritage through the lens of personhood, as not mere property but a type of ‘quasi-person,’ justifies an analogy to the successful return mechanism, the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The Convention is examined as it might influence claims for return of objects of cultural heritage. The thesis proposes suggestions for an improved cultural heritage return mechanism.