CULTURAL PROPERTY NEWS: LATEST COURT RESULTS

Engraving Description de la Chine, édition de La Haye 1736. Volume 2. Page 201

A lawsuit, U.S. v. 3 Knife-Shaped Coins etc., involving fifteen coins from China and Cyprus, none very beautiful or valuable, began as a test case in 2009, and has been hard-fought at every step by the nonprofit Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG). An important goal of the test case was to challenge the U.S. State Department’s actions in going far beyond the definitions and requirements set by Congress for import restrictions under the U.S.’s only deliberately crafted and comprehensive international cultural property legislation, the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA).

The lengthy legal battle has been possible only through the ACCG Board’s commitment to requiring adherence to law in the administration of U.S. cultural property policy. ACCG lead attorney Peter K. Tompa has shown unflagging determination to preserve Congress’s intent in the express language in the statute and to renew the integrity of the review process under the CPIA. The Guild has been equally tireless in pursuit of the public’s interest in due process under the Constitution. A host of amici added their voices (the Committee for Cultural Policy, the publisher of Cultural Property News, was one). Amici included the American Numismatic Association, Professional Numismatists Guild, International Association of Professional Numismatists, Association of Dealers and Collectors of Ancient and Ethnographic Art, and Global Heritage Alliance.

The result, after years of litigation, is that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has affirmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s original seizure of the coins, and also re-interpreted the plain language of the CPIA, by promoting ease of enforcement over due process and the legal requirements in the original legislation. In so doing, the Court did not criticize misrepresentations by the State Department to Congress, or its failure to follow the statute’s fundamental principles of balanced review. Finally, the ruling effectively lessens the government’s burden of proof to show that objects were unlawfully imported, a consequence Congress sought to avoid in the original legislation.

How will this decision impact the future ability of collectors to import archaeological and ethnological objects?

The answer depends largely upon the integrity of the review process under the CPIA, both in the recommendations of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee and on ensuring that the State Department’s officials at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs do not overstep their authority under the law. The decision curtails, at least for the moment, the ability of collectors and dealers to seek a correction to overbroad and unjustified import restrictions and unwarranted seizures by pointing out that the Designated Lists do not comport with the requirements under the CPIA, or that the process creating the existing lists was fundamentally flawed.

It means that until a future correction is made, neither Congressional intent, nor the criteria in the actual law, can set the limits of import restrictions, if the Department of State and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee fail to follow the Cultural Property Implementation Act as it is written.

To read the complete article, see:
An Epic Battle: U.S. v. 3 Knife-Shaped Coin (https://culturalpropertynews.org/an-epic-battle-u-s-v-3-knife-shaped-coins/)

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