Historical Appropriations: Of Time and Reparative Justice
Year: 2023

Abstract This chapter turns to proposing a methodology for the return of cultural objects from where they were taken without the consent of the local communities and States. First the chapter lays out the obstacles time places on restitution including bars to litigation based on passage of time, bars based on the non-retroactive nature of laws (tempus regit actum), and bars based on the failure to recognize colonized States as beneficiaries of international law in the nineteenth century. It then