Publié dans Art Antiquity and Law – quarterly journal

‍

Introduction

‍

On 26 November 2025, theFrench Cour de cassation – France’s supreme court in civil and criminal matters – issued a seminal decision, based on Order No. 45-770 of 21 April 1945 – under which the June 1942 auction of the art collection of the estate of French Jewish lawyer and art collector, ArmandIsaac Dorville, who had died on 28 July 1941, should be considered null and void.

The Cour de cassation overturned the decisions of the French lower courts and the advisory opinion of the Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliation (Commission for Restitution of Property and Compensation of Victims of Antisemitic Spoliations, ‘CIVS’) in the matter. It reached this decision, notwithstanding the fact that the executor, who was originally appointed in accordance with Dorville’s will, initiated the auction designated for 24-27 June 1942 in Nice to prevent the looting or “Aryanisation” of the collection and to finance the Dorville family’s attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France. Despite this, the sale of theartworks cannot be considered voluntary. This is so because of the appointment, on 25 June 1942, of a provisional administrator for Dorville’s estate, under the Loi relative aux entreprises et biens ayant appartenu à des Juifs absents ou disparus (Law on businesses and goods belonging to Jews who are absent or missing, known as the Loi d’aryanisation of 22 July 1941²) tasked with the ‘Aryanisation’ of the entire estate. The provisional administrator ordered the auctioneers to transfer any funds deriving from the public auction to his hands only – such that none of Dorville’s heirs could access these sums until the end of the war – and, from his appointment onwards, he ordered the sale of Dorville’s estate assets, including twelve paintings withdrawn by the heirs on the first day of the 1942auction.

In its ruling, the Cour de cassation established a rebuttable presumption in favour of owners or their heirs, by which the appointment of a provisional administrator during the course of an act of disposition initiated by the owner affected the conditions of the disposition, and must be treated as having been carried out “as a consequence” of extraordinary measures taken against Jews in Nazi-occupied France – unless such an appointment had no effect whatsoever until after the completion of the act.

This article surveys the historical, institutional and legal background of the spoliation of Jewish art collections in France between 1940 and 1944. It addresses in detail the facts of the Dorville case, the proceedings taken before the CIVS and the civil courts, and the decision of the Cour de cassation. It then explores the potential broad-based implications of the Dorville case, considering recent developments in other major jurisdictions. The key argument advanced is that almost 30 years after the 1998 Washington ConferencePrinciples, the general normative and institutional framework in such jurisdictions for addressing and resolving restitution claims may be gradually tilting from implementing the core concept of “just and fair solutions” by relying largely on “moral and ethical considerations” towards a more “hard law”approach – even if the conflict resolution is not done by civil litigation in courts, but through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.

The Spoliation of Jewish Art Collections in France: Historical, Institutional and Legal Background

Real-Time Awareness of the Unprecedented Art Plunder in France During the Nazi Era

Rose Valland was an art historian and archaeologist, who had served as an unpaid curatorial assistant at the Musée des Peintures et Sculptures Étrangères at the Jeu de Paume Museum since 1932. She was appointed, in October 1940, as a conservation officer byJacques Jaugeard, then Director of the French National Museums. When the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (the‘ERR’, Alfred Rosenberg’s operational staff), notably responsible for the seizure of cultural property in occupied countries, took over the Jeu de Paume Museum – located in the Tuileries Gardens in central Paris – to establish there the operational hub of its art-spoliation organisation in occupied France, Rose Valland refused to abandon her post. She used her on-site presence to observe the trafficking organised by the ERR and recorded all information in what would become the famous Rose Valland Notebooks.³ The information collected enabled Valland to later identify approximately 60,000 works originating from France within the ‘Collecting Points’,where the hundreds of thousands of looted cultural objects discovered inGermany by the Allies had been assembled as of June 1945.⁴

On 5 January 1943, faced with the scale of the plunder perpetrated by the Nazis in enemy-occupied territories, seventeen Allied countries – including France through the Comité national français, Great Britain and the United States – signed inLondon the Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed inTerritories Under Enemy Occupation or Control (‘1943 London Declaration’).⁵ The Comité Français deLibération Nationale (FrenchNational Liberation Committee, ‘CFLN’), created on 3 June 1943 and presided over by General de Gaulle, incorporated this Declaration by way of an Order published in the Official Journal ofAlger on 12 November 1943. The Order of 9 August 1944 on the restoration ofRepublican legality in Metropolitan France provided, in Article 1, that the form of government of France is, and shall remain, the Republic; as a matter of law, the Republic had not ceased to exist. Article 2 further provided that, consequently, all constitutional, legislative or regulatory acts, together with any implementing measures – whatever their title – promulgated in MetropolitanFrance after 16 June 1940 and until the restoration of the ProvisionalGovernment of the French Republic were null and void and of no effect. That nullity had to be expressly declared.

The Organisation of Restitutions in France in the Immediate Aftermath of the War

Ordonnance (Order) No. 45-770 of 21April 1945 – being the second implementing measure of the Order of 12 November1943 on the nullity of acts of spoliation carried out by the enemy or under its control, and providing for the restitution to victims of such parts of their property which had been the subject of acts of disposition – states in its explanatory memorandum that it forms part of the 1943 London Declaration and enables, through a procedure as swift and as inexpensive as possible, dispossessed owners to regain lawful possession of their property, rights or interests, by application of the principle that such acts of transfer are null and void.

Comprising 34 articles, theOrder establishes a procedure enabling victims of spoliation – whether or not of Jewish faith – to obtain a judicial declaration of nullity in respect of all azcts of disposition carried out pursuant to legislation “promulgated” by theVichy regime, and to secure restitution of spoliated property wherever it maybe found and into whosoever’s hands it may have passed. Article 1 of the Order of 21 April 1945⁶ expressly provides that the nullity of acts of disposition carried out under the conditions set out in the instrument must be declared even where such acts were accomplished with the “material assistance” of the persons concerned.

From the liberation ofFrance onwards, the organisation of restitution was entrusted to the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés(Office of Private Property and Interests, ‘OBIP’), an agency created after theFirst World War to ensure, under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs(to which it reported), the execution of those clauses in the Versailles Treaty relating to private property. However, identifying and locating cultural objects looted and displaced during the conflict necessitated the creation of a specialist body: the Commission deRécupération Artistique (Artistic Recovery Commission, ‘CRA’), established on 24 November 1944 by Jacques Jaujard, Director of the National Museums. Rose Valland, appointed Secretary of the CRA, was tasked with doing research pertaining to the recovery of artworks and cultural property taken by the enemy from French public bodies or French nationals. Approximately 60,000 objects identified in the Collecting Points through her notebooks were repatriated toFrance. By 1949, after five years of work, approximately 44,000 objects had been returned to the dispossessed owners or their heirs.

The Decree of 30 September1949,⁷ which set the end date of the CRA’s activities on 31 December 1949, provided for the establishment of two “selection commissions”, one for artworks and one for books, tasked with selecting those items which, having been incapable of restitution, were of the greatest artistic and historical interest. Between October 1949 and June 1953,a little over 2,000 works out of 15,792 recovered and not restituted were thus elected and placed under the custody of the National Museums to be entered on special inventories under the designation MuséesNationaux Récupération (National Museums Recovery, ‘MNR’).⁸ The Decree provided for the exhibition of those works (shown from1950 to 1954 at the National Museum of the Château de Compiègne) and for their inclusion on provisional inventories made available to dispossessed persons. As for the nearly 14,000 works not selected, they were sold by the State for the benefit of the Domaines⁹ at relatively discreet auctions, which are now very difficult to trace.

The Era of Silence

The Federal Republic ofGermany, under Allied pressure (which made such procedures a condition of their withdrawal from occupied zones), organised time-limited compensation mechanisms for dispossessed families within the framework of the law commonly referred to as the BrüG.¹⁰ In Austria, a series of time-limited restitution laws were introduced, with the Third Restitution Act of 6 February 1947 (‘BGBl 54/1947’)¹¹ being particularly relevant to a legal right to the return of personal property, including artwork, confiscated from private persons during the Nazi period.¹²

However, under these and other time-limited laws and regulations, the files concerning claims for restitution of works looted, spoliated or sold under duress were effectively closed by the early 1960s. Until the resurgence of the issue in the late 1990s, there were virtually no restitutions. Accordingly, from the late 1950s to the mid-1990s, the question of restitution of artworks spoliated during the1933-1945 period fell into silence and oblivion, including in France.¹³

The Resurgence of Calls for Restitutions in the Mid-1990s

Change occurred in the mid-1990s, driven by renewed historiographical research made possible notably by the fall of the Soviet bloc, the opening of new archives, the emergence of the internet and easier access to databases.¹⁴ Such research contributed to the emergence of a renewed collective memory of the genocide of the Jews. Two works played a particularly significant role in reviving the issue of art plunder in territories occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War. In September 1995, Lynn Nicholas, an American art historian, published in the United States the book The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War.¹⁵ The same year, the journalist Hector Feliciano published in France Le Musée Disparu, the result of an eight-year investigation that traced works and objects stolen by the Nazis andWehrmacht soldiers, as German forces advanced and occupied territories acrossEurope.¹⁶

The issue of art spoliation gained traction within a broader reassessment of France’s role during theSecond World War, exemplified by President Jacques Chirac’s seminal speech on16 July 1995, recognising France’s responsibility in the deportation of Jews.In that context, the ‘Study Mission on the Spoliation of the Jews of France’ was launched in 1997, chaired by Jean Mattéoli, and it conducted wide-ranging inquiries across the various fields of antisemitic spoliation. The Mattéoli Commission underlined in its final report that the Administration –particularly the Direction des Musées deFrance – should devote greater efforts to identifying the dispossessed owners of works.¹⁷ That mission led to the creation, in 1999, of the Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah and of the CIVS, responsible for compensating. victims of spoliation resulting from antisemitic legislation in force during the Nazi occupation.¹⁸

At the international level, a conference was held in Washington, D.C. in December 1998, bringing together44 countries, including France. The conference resulted in the adoption of eleven non-binding guiding principles.¹⁹ The 1998 Washington Conference Principles will be reconsidered below, but it should be said at the outset that they had a significant impact on the institutional and normative framework for addressing the restitution ofNazi-era spoliated art in France, alongside domestic developments.

Reforms to Restitution Procedures

A first reform of the research and restitution procedure for MNR works was developed following a report drafted by David Zivie, at the request of Audrey Azoulay, then FrenchMinister of Culture.²⁰ Consequently, a Decree of 1 October 2018²¹ conferred competence on the CIVS to propose to the Prime Minister, on its own initiative or at the request of any concerned person, any measure necessary for restitution or, failing that, compensation, in cases of spoliation of cultural property resulting from antisemitic legislation in force during the Occupation – particularly where such property has been integrated into public collections or recovered by France after the Second World War and has since been entrusted to the custody of the national museums.

By Ministerial Order of 17May 2019,²² a “mission for research and restitution of cultural property spoliated between 1933 and 1945”was created to co-ordinate public policy aimed at identifying and restituting such property, in particular items spoliated resulting from antisemitic measures, either where the spoliation occurred in France or where the items are currently located on French territory. Its direction was entrusted to David Zivie, author of the above report. The Mission conducts research, aimed at enabling the identification of spoliated cultural property held by public institutions, its pre-Nazi-era owners, or their successors in title. It examines cases of spoliation of cultural property as referenced in Article 1-1of Decree No. 99-778 of 10 September 1999, as amended,²³ which established the CIVS – the body responsible for compensating victims of spoliation resulting from antisemitic legislation in force during the Occupation, under the conditions defined in Article 1-2 of that Decree.

Certain works entered in public collection inventories proved to be spoliated, yet the principle of inalienability of public collections²⁴ and the resultant impossibility of declassification constituted an obstacle to restitution. Accordingly, Rima Abdul Malak, French Minister ofCulture, announced a proposed framework legislation, enabling the declassification of “problematic” cultural property. In spring 2023, a first framework law was presented to the French Parliament, intended to permit removal from national collections – notwithstanding the principle of inalienability of State public-domain property – of works shown to have been spoliated between 1933 and 1945. This law, adopted unanimously on 22 July 2023and published in the Journal Officiel on 23 July 2023,²⁵ provides that the public body in whose collection the disputed work is included shall decide on the declassification of such objects after obtaining the opinion of an administrative commission placed under the Prime Minister and competent in matters of reparation for harm resulting from spoliations of property carried out as a consequence of antisemitic persecutions. The commission’s opinion is required to establish whether or not the work in question was in fact spoliated as well as the circumstances of that spoliation.

The Decree of 5 January2024, adopted for the application of Article L. 115-4 of the Code du Patrimoine (French HeritageCode), as introduced by Law No. 2023-650 of 22 July 2023, pursues two objectives.²⁶ First, it repeals and replaces Decree No. 99-778 of 10 September 1999 establishing the commission for compensating victims of spoliations resulting from antisemitic legislation in force during the Occupation; the commission becomes the Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisemites (Commission for restitution of property and compensation of victims of antisemitic spoliations), still referred to as the CIVS.²⁷ Second, it establishes in the regulatory section of the Code the procedure to be followed to enable the removal from the public collections, with a view to restitution, of cultural property for which a record of spoliation has been established.²⁸

The Significance of the Order of 21 April 1945 Reaffirmed within the French Legal Order

The supreme bodies of both jurisdictional orders in France – the Cour de cassation (Court of cassation) for the judicial courts and the Conseil d’État (Council of State) for the administrative courts – have worked together in recognising the need to interpret the Order of 21 April 1945 in the spirit of the 1943 LondonDeclaration, to render null and void both transfers or dealings amounting to open looting or spoliation, or other illicit dealings that had the appearance of legality – even where they purport to have been effected with the consent of the victims.²⁹

In his address, opening the symposium organised by the Cour de cassation and the CIVS on 4 December 2025, entitled “Justice and Spoliated Property: 80 Years After the Order of 21 April 1945”, the First President of the Cour de cassation, ChristopheSoulard, stated that the symposium marked the eightieth anniversary of an Order which, in the immediate aftermath of the war, made it possible to respond to one of the gravest assaults not only upon human beings but also upon the patrimony of victims, and that this text remains, even today, an essential landmark of the French legal order. He further stated that the Order of 21April 1945 “illustrates the permanence of a fundamental principle: the law is intended to restore the legal order when it has been altered, but also to preserve the memory of those who suffered from its erasure.”³⁰

The Dorville Case

Armand Dorville: An Integrated Israelite

Armand Isaac Dorville (1875-1941) was a barrister before the Paris Court of Appeal, a member of theBar Council, a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (‘Knight of the Legion of Honour’) and a major art collector.Born on 18 July 1875 in Paris’s 9th arrondissement, he pursued legal studies, becoming a prize-winner of the Paris Faculty of Law. He was called to the Barin 1899 and specialised in financial law. In 1901, he obtained his doctorate after defending a thesis, entitled: MoralInterest in Obligations: A ComparativeLaw Study on the Principle of Pecuniary Reparation for Non-economic Damage.³¹

Enlisted as a warrant officer in August 1914 within the 83rd Territorial Infantry Regiment, he took an active part in France’s defence. Wounded for the first time at Tournai inBelgium by shrapnel, he was promoted to second lieutenant on 23 November 1914and appointed to perform the functions of a reporting commissioner to the WarCouncil of the 8th Division, a role he held until 1 September 1917. He was promoted to lieutenant and positioned at the divisional headquarters on 25October 1916, appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1917, awarded the Croix de guerre, and elevated to Officier de la Légion d’honneur (‘Officer of the Legion of Honour’) on 14 July1918, before being demobilised in 1919 and returning to the Palais de Justice, where he was elected to serve on the Bar Council from 1927 to 1931.

A passionate historian,Armand Isaac Dorville was also a great connoisseur and collector of art and a generous donor. Aware of the dangers of the impending war in the mid-1930s, here located with part of his art collection to the south of France, in Dordogne, to a small twelfth-century château near the town of Cubjac, bought at auction on 5 May 1935.

Armand Dorville’s FateFollowing the Nazi Occupation

The Germans entered Paris on14 June 1940; on 16 June 1940, Paul Reynaud, President of the Council, resigned. The Government moved to Vichy on 2 July, and on 10 July 1940 full powers were conferred upon Marshal Philippe Pétain. The occupying authorities andPétain’s regime then implemented a policy of persecution of the Jews of France. Dorville was subjected to the prohibitions imposed on Jews, including restrictions on practising his profession and on returning to the occupied zone, despite having left part of his property at his Paris residence at 16 rue Séguier.

Dorville died in Cubjac on28 July 1941 at the age of 66. He had set out his last wishes in a hand written will dated 2 May 1939 and deposited with his Paris notary, Maître Fontana.Under that will, he appointed his four nieces: Marie-Thérèse Lion (1905-1995),Denise Lion (1919-1944), Monique Lion (1921-1944) and Marie-Louise Levy Dorville (1911-1993) as universal legatees of the bare ownership of his estate.His brother Charles Dorville (1889-1967), his sisters Valentine Dorville (wife of Albert Lion) (1881-1944) and Jeanne Dorville (wife of Jean-Marcel Lévy)(1882-1972) and his housekeeper Elia Coucard on were named as legatees of the usufruct over his estate. An art lover and member of the Board of the Musée desArts Décoratifs, Armand Isaac Dorville bequeathed numerous works and objects to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Louvre and the Musée Carnavalet.

A partner of Armand Isaac Dorville from 1930, Jacques Pfeiffer (1897-1986) was appointed executor of Dorville’s estate. Pfeiffer was Jewish, an officer of the Académie and of the Legion of Honour, and a Paris barrister. At the time of Dorville’s death, Pfeiffer was a prisoner of war in Germany: captured at Saint-Fraimbault-sur-Pisse (Orne) on 18 June 1940, he was interned at OflagX-B Nienburg-am-Weser and then at Colditz Castle until 29 October 1941. He was released on 25 November 1941 as a former combatant and demobilised in Marseille. As a Jew, and therefore subject to measures derogating from ordinary law, he was only partially able to act as executor from the end of 1941.

The Designated Auction of Dorville’s Art Collection

Because Armand Isaac Dorville died in the ‘free zone’ and his notary was in Paris – a city which neither the beneficiaries nor the executor could access following the Order of27 September 1940 prohibiting Jews who had fled the occupied zone from returning– a second notary had to be appointed in Périgueux, which had territorial competence over the Cubjac château. It was therefore only on 23 April 1942, nearly one year after Dorville’s death, that an inventory of the movable property located at Cubjac château was drawn up at Pfeiffer’s request by MaîtreLatour, notary in Périgueux.

Aware of the many threats weighing both on the deceased’s estate and on the lives of the heirs, Pfeiffer decided that the artworks sheltered at Cubjac should be sold, to avoid looting or “Aryanisation” and to finance the family’s flight towards Spain or Switzerland.A public auction presentation was therefore organised urgently and within a very short timeframe at the Hôtel Savoy in Nice on 24, 25, 26 and 27 June 1942, under the auspices of Maître Terris, auctioneer, described after the conflict as an active collaborator of the Vichy regime. However, despite Pfeiffer’s diligence in organising the dispersal of the assets entrusted to him, the legals tructures created by Vichy to implement economic “Aryanisation” prevailed over the executor.

The sale was announced inJune 1942 in local and national newspapers as an “auction of the collection of a Parisian connoisseur.” Thus, Paris-soir published on 24 June 1942 an article entitled “A little of Paris is to be broken up at auction … in 445 pictures by the most illustrious painters and engravers of the nineteenth century.” Comprising more than 450 lots, the sale included, among others, four canvases by Pierre Bonnard, five by ThomasCouture, seven by Félix Vallotton, nine by Édouard Vuillard, two by AugusteRenoir and one water colour by Édouard Manet. It also included 95 water coloursby Constantin Guys, 34 paintings, water colours and gouaches by Jean-LouisForain and works by Eugène Delacroix. In addition, original waxes, bronzes and terracotta works by Carpeaux, Mène and Rodin were offered for sale.

However, following Dorville’s death, Gilbert Jacquin, his caretaker at Cubjac, sought authorisation from the Dordogne Prefect as early as 17 May 1942 to acquire a parcel of the property then belonging to Dorville’s heirs, the Levy and Lion families. In the form submitted to the Prefecture of Périgueux, Jacquin declared that the vendor of the parcel was Jewish within the meaning of the law of 2 June 1941. This request triggered the implementation by the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives(General Commissariat for Jewish Questions, ‘CGQJ’) of the “Aryanisation”procedure concerning Dorville’s assets, pursuant to the law of 22 July 1941.Amédée Croze was appointed provisional administrator (administrateur provisoire) of the movable property of the Dorville estate by an order dated 24 June 1942, as follows: Having regard to Article 1of the law of 22 July 1941 concerning enterprises, property and assets belonging to Jews: Orders: Sole Article: The entirety of the movable property forming part of the estate of M. LEVY DORVILLE, in his lifetime a barrister before the Paris Court of Appeal and former member of the Bar Council, deceased at CUBJAC (Dordogne) in 1941, property held by Monsieur PFEIFFER, executor of the deceased, is hereby placed under the provisional administrator designated below: Monsieur CROZE Amédée, 8 rue Cafarelli, Nice. At Vichy, 24 June 1942.Signed: Darquier de PELLEPOIX.

Accordingly, and pursuant toArticle 3 of the Aryanisation law of 22 July 1941, Amédée Croze acquired, from the very day of his appointment (24 June 1942), full powers over the movable assets of the Dorville estate for the purpose of carrying out “Aryanisation.” Furthermore, at Croze’s request, the CGQJ extended his remit as early as 14September 1942 to all immovable property and real rights forming part of the estate, particularly the Cubjac property, by an order dated 21 September 1942.Moreover, as a provisional administrator, Croze sought information from Maître Pfeiffer and Maître Latour about the matrimonial regimes of the bare-owner heirs, all four of whom were Jewish, adding that this would enable assessment of the Jewish influence under which the devolved assets would fall and, where appropriate, proposals for placing them under administration. Tasked with the“Aryanisation” of the entire estate, Croze blocked the proceeds of sales organised before and after his appointment and, from his appointment onwards, organised the sale of various estate assets of Dorville.

On 25 June 1942, while theNice sale was ongoing, Croze served on Pfeiffer a formal notice and recorded demand requiring him, as provisional administrator of the personal property of the late Monsieur Dorville appointed by order of the CGQJ dated 24 June 1942,to disclose what assets comprised the deceased’s property within the meaning ofArticle 1 of the Aryanisation law of 22 July 1941 as amended by the law of 17November 1941, and to make all useful declarations upon Croze’s request, notably concerning precious stones, precious metals, jewellery and artworks.

The provisional administrator also notified by bailiff the auctioneers Terris and Bussilet andMr Martini, art expert, that he objected to their transferring any funds deriving from the public auction announced for 24 June 1942 into any hands other than his own. On 27 August 1942, the auctioneer Maître Terris handed over to him the sale proceeds amounting to 8,147,630 francs; on Croze’s instructions, the balance was paid into an account opened in the name of the Dorville estate. None of the heirs could therefore access these sums before the end of the war. Finally, Croze required that, of the 46 paintings withdrawn by the heirs on the first day of the sale, twelve would be re-offered for sale on12 April 1943.

Croze’s intervention thus reduced Pfeiffer’s initiative to mere “material assistance” within the meaning of Article 1 of the Ordonnance of 21 April 1945. Moreover, appointment by theCGQJ deprived the collector’s heirs of funds that might have enabled them to flee persecution. The deportation archives of the Jews of France, held at theMémorial de la Shoah, reveal the extent of the extraordinary measures endured by the Dorville family members, who were pursued, persecuted and ultimately murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.

The Fate of Dorville’s FamilyMembers

From 27 September 1940, theGermans ordered the registration of Jews residing in the occupied zone, placing responsibility on police commissioners. On the French side, a ministerial circular dated 27 October 1940 instructed prefects in the occupied zone not to allow the administration merely to record declarations passively, but to conduct checks and ensure sanctions against non-compliance. The law of 2 June1941 imposed registration of Jews throughout France, both in the occupied and free zones. Part of Armand Isaac Dorville’s family, the Tabets, were thus registered as Jews in the commune of Saint-Vincent-sur-l’Isle, arrondissement of Périgueux.

In August 1941, a group of buildings under construction in Drancy (Seine département) was converted into an internment camp and, from March 1942, a transit camp to the Nazi death camps. In July 1943, the Drancy camp, previously administered and guarded byParis Police Prefecture agents, came under direct German control.

In 1942, Valentine Lion, Dorville’s sister, and her husband Albert-Achille Lion left their Paris flat to take refuge in Lyon, where Albert died on 14 April 1942. In September 1943,Valentine Lion, with two of her daughters and two granddaughters, attempted unsuccessfully to cross into Spain to join her son-in-law Félix Falk. A Romanian-born medical doctor, naturalised in 1938, stripped of French nationality in August 1942 and barred from practising medicine by a notice published in the Journal Officiel of5 July 1942, Félix Falk had fled to Spain and joined the Resistance there.After the failure of the crossing attempt, Valentine Lion, her daughters and granddaughters took refuge in Megève in the hope of reaching Switzerland.Following a report filed to the police by locals about their whereabouts, all five were arrested by the French police, imprisoned in Annecy, and then interned at Drancy on 24 March 1944. Valentine was registered under prisoner number 17572. She was deported on Convoy 72 that left Drancy on 29 April 1944for Auschwitz, where she died on 4 May 1944. Her daughter Denise Lion (wife ofFalk) was also interned at Drancy from Annecy on 24 March 1944 under number17573 and deported with her two-year-old daughter Dominique on Convoy 72. Denise and Dominique died at Auschwitz on 29 April 1944. Monique Lion (wife of Tabet) was interned at Drancy with her four-year-old daughter Marie-France Tabet under numbers 15575 and 28715. Both were deported on Convoy 72 that left Drancy on 29 March 1944 and died at Auschwitz on 13 October 1944.

Research conducted byEmmanuelle Polack, as part of a task force appointed in Germany after the disclosure of the Gürlitt affair³² in 2013, enabled Dorville’s successors in title to discover the existence of the auction organised in Nice in June 1942. Arguing that the auction amounted to spoliation within the criteria of Order No. 45-770 of 21April 1945, Dorville’s successors in title sought restitution of the lots acquired in 1942 by the Director of national museums, by approaching the Réunion des musées nationaux (FrenchMuseums Service, ‘RMN’) in 2017. As the discussion between the parties did not result in agreement, the successors lodged an application with the CIVS on 13November 2019.

Proceedings Before the CIVS

Following an investigation entrusted to the Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945 (Mission for Research and Restitution ofProperty Spoliated between 1933 and 1945, ‘M2RS’), on 17 May 2021 the CIVS issued Recommendation No. 24582 BCM concerning movable cultural property. It declared itself lacking jurisdiction to rule on the application of the Order of21 April 1945 to the June 1942 auction, but considered that, despite the appointment by the Commissariat Général des Questions Juives (‘CGQJ’) on the first day of the sale of a provisional administrator charged with "Aryanising” the estate, “the auctions were carried out without violence or constraint.” It therefore considered that the sale was not spoliative. The CIVS nevertheless found that the acquisition of twelve lots at the Nice sale by theRMN took place in a troubling context and with knowledge of the CGQJ appointment, and that, consequently, those works should not remain in public collections. On that recommendation, the Prime Minister decided to transfer those works – until then held at the Louvre and the Compiègne museum – to Dorville’s successors in title in return for reimbursement of the June 1942hammer prices, as updated. Because the works had entered the public domain upon acquisition, they were declassified pursuant to the Law of 21 February 2022³³ to allow transfer. The impact assessment of the draft law on restitution or transfer of certain cultural property (promulgated 21 February2022) recalled the need to apply the Order of 21 April 1945 in the spirit of the 1943 London Declaration, namely to defeat dispossession methods, even when cloaked in apparent legality. The twelve lots acquired by the RMN at the 24-27June 1942 sale were transferred to Dorville’s successors in title under the law of 21 February 2022 on 13 May and 22 June 2022.

The Action for AnnulmentBefore the French Courts

Considering the CIVS’s assessment to be inconsistent with both the spirit of the 1943 LondonDeclaration and the express wording of the Order of 21 April 1945, Dorville’s successors in title brought proceedings before the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance (Court of Justice) in June 2021.Relying on the Order of 21 April 1945, they sought (i) a declaration of nullity of the public auction organised in Nice on 24, 25, 26 and 27 June 1942, and(ii) an order for restitution of all works currently held in public collections, namely the nine remaining lots acquired at the sale and still held in public collections.

Article 17 of the Order of21 April 1945 provides that the court should engage in a merit-based procedure in a form akin to summary proceedings. A reform in 2021 required consultation of the Cour de cassation, which inOpinion No. 22-70.006 of 14 September 2022 confirmed that the President of theCourt of Justice had jurisdiction to hear claims under Article 17 of the OrderNo. 45-770 of 21 April 1945. In such a case, the President acts under an expedited merits procedure under Article 481-1 of the Code de procédure civile(Code of Civil Procedure), notwithstanding that the Order refers to “procedure in the form of summary proceedings”, a provision which was repealed with effect from 1 January 2020.

Article 21 of the Order required the action seeking nullity to be brought before 31 December 1951.Therefore, the Dorville heirs also had to seek relief from this statutory time-bar (relevé de forclusion). This required them to demonstrate that it had been physically impossible for them to act within that period. By judgment in an expedited merits proceedings dated 10January 2023, the court dismissed their application for relief from the time bar and accordingly held their nullity claim inadmissible. The successors appealed. They obtained from two experts in history and civilisation, Ms Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Ms Hélène Ivanoff, a historical report on the circumstances surrounding the disputed sale, intended to strengthen the demonstration of threats and violence weighing on the Dorville heirs at the time. By judgment dated 5 December 2023, the Paris Court of Appeal set aside the first-instance decision, granted relief from the time bar and held the claim admissible, but dismissed the claim for nullity founded on Articles 1 and11 of the Order of 21 April 1945. Despite the factual material supported by the historical report, the Court of Appeal held that there was no demonstration of a causal link between the appointment of the provisional administrator – an exceptional measure derogating from ordinary law – and the disputed sale, nor that such appointment constituted, at the time of the sale, a current and grave fear for the heirs which vitiated their consent.

The Ruling of the Cour deCassation

The Dorville successors lodged an appeal on points of law. Ms Sylvie Kerner-Menay, judge of the FirstCivil Chamber of the Cour de cassation, prepared an extensive report following a thorough research conducted with the assistance of the Court’s Service de documentation, des études et du rapport (Documentation,Studies and Reports Department, ‘SDER’) . The case was pleaded before the FirstChamber of the Court.

The report recalled thatArticle 1 of the 1945 Order lays down a principle of nullity as of right where the following conditions are met:

The existence of an act of disposition concerning the property, rights, or interests of natural or legal persons, or their successors in title, even with their material assistance; and An act carried out “as a consequence” of exceptional measures derogating from ordinary law in force as of 16 June 1940 – notably, the appointment of a provisional administrator.

There was no dispute that the public auction sale of Armand Isaac Dorville’s collection constituted an act of disposition. The legal issue before the Cour de cassation concerned the causal role of the provisional administrator’s appointment in the 24-27 June 1942 sale. Among the measures listed in Article 1 of the 1945 Order, the appointment of a provisional administrator is the archetypal exceptional measure introduced after 16 June1940. Indeed, the law of 22 July 1941 and its implementing decree of 21 November1941 set forth the process of the “Aryanisation” of Jewish property.

Article 1 of the 1941 Decree states that, with a view to eliminating all Jewish influence in the national economy, the Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs may appoint a provisional administrator over any chattel, security, movable asset or movable property of any kind where those to whom it belongs, or who manage it, or some of them, areJewish. Article 3 provides that the appointment of the provisional administrator entails the dispossession of the persons to whom the property belongs, or who manage it. The provisional administrator has full powers from the moment of his appointment. Pursuant to these provisions, the appointment ofAmédée Croze by the CGQJ on 24 June 1942 entailed the dispossession of Dorville’s heirs and of the executor, Jacques Pfeiffer.

That said, the CIVS and then the first-instance and appellate courts had maintained that, because the executor Pfeiffer had initiated the sale, the provisional administrator’s intervention did not prevent the sale from proceeding under “normal conditions”,thereby denying the causal role of the appointment.

However, having regard to the aforementioned legal instruments, and since the appointment for the purpose of the Aryanisation of property by a provisional administrator during the course of an act of disposition, such as an auction sale, entails dispossession of the owner or his successors in title, the Cour de cassation held that this affects the conditions under which that act is carried out, depriving the executor or the heirs of any ability to renounce it, such that the heirs can no longer be seen as agreeing to the sale, even if it was initiated by them and they provided material assistance.Accordingly, in the view of the Cour de cassation, such an act should be seen as being carried out as a consequence of a measure derogating from ordinary law, unless it is established, on the basis of the factual material and evidence submitted, that the appointment of the provisional administrator remained without any effect until the act of sale was fully completed.

Published in the court’s bulletin and in its 2025 report, the decision thus establishes a rebuttable presumption: the appointment of a provisional administrator during the course of an act of disposition initiated by the owner affects the conditions of the act, which must therefore be treated as having been carried out “as a consequence” of an extraordinary measure derogating from France’s ordinary law– unless the appointment had no effect whatsoever until the act’s completion.

In the case of the 24-27June 1942 sale, the CGQJ appointment did not remain without effect, as held by the Cour de cassation³⁴ in its judgment of 26 November 2025. The Cour de cassation held that the Paris Court of Appeal had failed to draw the proper legal consequences from its own factual findings in its 5December 2023 judgment, by which the provisional administrator had not prevented the sale from continuing under the initially planned modalities.According to the Cour de cassation, the provisional administrator’s actions were consistent with the objective of“Aryanisation” of property, since he confiscated the entirety of the sale proceeds to the detriment of the heirs, and subsequently called into question the exercise by the heirs of their right of withdrawal in respect of certain paintings, such that the appointment of Croze as the provisional administrator in 1942 under the Nazi era legal regime in France had not remained without effect.

The Cour de cassation therefore remanded the case to the Paris Court of Appeal. The Court also ordered the State, the cities of Nice, Grenoble and Dijon, together with the Louvre and Orsay museums to pay Dorville’s successors in title the sum of 4,000 euros for legal costs incurred.

In February 2026, the FrenchMinistry of Culture decided to continue the proceedings before the Court ofAppeal – which will reassess the case based on the decision of the Cour de cassation.

Toward the Reconstruction of a Lex Specialis for Nazi-LootedObjects? Lessons For – and – From Other Jurisdictions

Following the publication of the decision by the Cour de cassation on 26 November 2025, the Dorville case received considerable attention in France and beyond, and particularly in other jurisdictions that are actively addressing claims for restitution ofNazi-era spoliated cultural items.

This section explores the potential broad-based implications of the Dorville case, considering recent developments in other major jurisdictions. The key argument advanced in this section is that almost 30 years after the 1998Washington Conference Principles, the general normative and institutional framework in such jurisdictions for addressing and resolving restitution claims may be gradually shifting from implementing the core concept of “just and fair solutions” by relying largely on “moral and ethical considerations” towards amore “hard law” approach, even if the conflict resolution is not done by litigation in courts, but by alternative mechanisms.

Moreover, while each such jurisdiction is (re)devising its own substantive and procedural rules, the key findings of the Cour de cassation about the inherently coercive nature of the 1942 auction of Dorville’s art collection may affect the legal analysis of restitution claims in other jurisdictions.

The Diverse Normative andInstitutional Landscape of Addressing Nazi-Era Restitution Claims

The prominence of the Cour de cassation as France’s highest court in civil matters, and its global standing as one of the most notable national courts in the world, might lend particular weight to its principled decision in the Dorville case. This is so not only within France – especially because the Court came to a materially different conclusion from that of the CIVS, in a manner that may also influence the position of the French State in the follow-up proceedings that will take place before the Court of Appeal – but also in other jurisdictions. According to the terminology coined by David Law and Mark Tush net,³⁵ while engaging in a“domestic or inter-branch judicial dialogue” within France may serve the Cour de cassation as the nation’s apex court in endorsing its role vis-à-vis other government actors,³⁶ the Dorville decision may also be seen as part of a “transnational judicial dialogue.” Such dialogue often takes place for topics of a universal character, such as human rights, and it is associated with efforts by apex courts to “strengthen themselves by affiliating themselves with prestigious courts and exerting ‘soft’ power over courts elsewhere.”³⁷

While the French court is generally known to be a ‘favourite’ source for non-domestic citations by courts in European countries such as Belgium and Italy,³⁸ in the context of claims for restitution of Nazi-era spoliations of cultural property, such an influence may also be exerted on other jurisdictions that address this issue, within and outside of Europe. However, it is essential to underscore the diversity of the normative and institutional landscape across national jurisdictions.

In fact, outside of France, the only other major jurisdiction in which civil court proceedings may be available for restitution claims of Nazi-era spoliation, 80 years after the end of the Second World War, is the United States. Until 2016, the availability of such court proceedings relied on state law and on general doctrines that apply within such US states for claims of conversion or replevin for movable assets that were stolen or otherwise unlawfully taken from the original owner (namely, not doctrines that are specific to cultural property or Nazi-era spoliation of them). Thus, for example, while the statute of limitations in New York State for such claims is three years, this period does not begin until the original owner locates the object, identifies its current possessor, and makes a request for its return.³⁹ This is unlike other jurisdictions, in which the period of limitation starts from the date of the wrongful or contested action, such as the theft or purchase of the item by the current possessor.⁴⁰ At the same time, New York State applies a counter balancing equitable doctrine of “laches”, by which an original owner who fails to search diligently for a stolen object or does not make a demand in a timely fashion after identifying the current possessor may be denied recovery, even if the statute of limitations has not yet elapsed.⁴¹ As a matter of substantive property doctrine, the law in US states, including in New York State, follows the principle of nemo dat quod non habet (“he who does not have cannot give”), which favours the original owner over subsequent possessors – as opposed to legal systems, such as civil-law ones prevailing in continental Europe, which protect “good-faith purchasers” or the“acquisitive prescription” by possessors after a certain period of time from the date of purchase or possession.⁴²

In 2016, the US Congress enacted the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act.⁴³ The HEAR Act grants, with certain exceptions, an extended time frame for heirs of persons dispossessed during the period between 1933 and 1945 to submit claims that would otherwise have been time-barred.⁴⁴ In early 2026, the Congress enacted the Holocaust Expropriated ArtRecovery Act of 2025,⁴⁵which not only extends the duration of the 2016 Act, but also denies certain defences that could have been hitherto raised in such cases, including the ‘laches’ defence, ⁴⁶ the doctrine of prolonged and unchallenged possession, or the ‘international comity’ doctrine, under which US courts can decline to hear cases involving foreign nations and their laws.⁴⁷

In contrast, civil court proceedings are likely to be unavailable in other jurisdictions owing to both procedural (e.g., time-limits) and substantive doctrines (good faith buyer/acquisitive prescription). Accordingly, following the 1998 Washington ConferencePrinciples, the institutional mechanisms that were established in five European countries that implemented the Principles were ones of ‘restitution committees’ which, unlike the courts, reach their decisions on the basis of fairness and justice rather than strictly applying legal principles. These mechanisms thus conform to Principle XI:

Nations are encouraged to develop national processes to implement these principles, particularly as they relate to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues.⁴⁸

The five restitution committees were established in Austria,⁴⁹ France,⁵⁰Germany,⁵¹ the Netherlands⁵² and the United Kingdom.⁵³ While differing substantially from one another in numerous aspects,⁵⁴ in 2018 the five committees formed the Network of EuropeanRestitution Committees on Nazi-Looted Art,⁵⁵ which serves as a joint platform for these committees.

Two recent developments should be highlighted in the context of these restitution committees. First, inMarch 2024, German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, ClaudiaRoth, announced that the German Advisory Commission (Beratende Kommission) would be replaced by a system of binding arbitration⁵⁶ and, at a meeting held in May 2024, the Commission was dissolved.⁵⁷ In October 2024, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, BKM), the Länder (states), and the National Association of MunicipalOrganizations presented an initial outline of the new arbitration framework, to be developed in collaboration with two representative Jewish organisations: theCentral Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) and the Claims Conference on Jewish MaterialClaims against Germany (‘Claims Conference’). The Administrative Agreementbetween the different levels of government – Verwaltungsabkommen Zur Einrichtung Einer Gemeinsamen Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit Für Rückgabestreitigkeiten Über Ns-Raubgut (‘Administrative AgreementEstablishing Joint Arbitration for Disputes Concerning the Return ofNazi-Looted Cultural Property’) was concluded in 2025, and has been signed by the federal government, the sixteen Länder, and a growing number of local governments in Germany.⁵⁸

As noted by Matthias Weller, the basic structure of the new arbitration framework follows the patterns of international investment arbitration: the public party makes a ‘standing’ offer to conclude an arbitration agreement, and then any eligible claimant can decide whether to accept this offer.⁵⁹ The offer to conclude the arbitration agreement (based on a ‘ModelArbitration Agreement’) is subject to arbitration rules (‘Rules ofArbitration’) as well as an assessment framework for evaluating the strength of the claim (‘Assessment Framework’), specifically tailored to the subject matter– all published in 2025 by the federal Ministry of Culture and the Media.⁶⁰ The German Schiedsgericht NSRaubgut (Arbitral Tribunal for Nazi-looted Art) started its operation on1 December 2025, with the appointment of a pool of 36 arbitrators.⁶¹

Second, in January 2026, theSwiss Government appointed the members of a new body – the Commission forHistorically Problematic Cultural Heritage.⁶² This body was established by an earlier decision of the SwissGovernment in November 2023,⁶³and a 2025 amendment to the Swiss Federal Act on the International Transfer ofCultural Property, which went into force on 1 March 2026.⁶⁴ The Commission is tasked with addressing cases, which can be referred to it by natural or legal persons, about cultural items possession of which was transferred in “historically problematic” circumstances, including not only the Nazi era, but also the era of colonialism – and issuing non-binding recommendations to the Swiss Government in the matter.⁶⁵

The institutional and normative landscape of claims for the restitution of Nazi-era spoliated cultural property is therefore extremely diverse, meaning that, while the common point of departure for all these national frameworks lies in the 1998Washington Conference Principles and later non-binding international instruments, such as the 2009 Terezín Declaration,⁶⁶ the implementation of these Principles is far from adhering to a single system of rules and decision-making institutions.

Trying to identify some common ground, at least among the European jurisdictions, a key research project took place at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelm University Bonn, under the academic direction of its lead author, Matthias Weller, entitled: ‘Restatement of Restitution Rules for Nazi Confiscated Art: Eine vergleichende Bestandsaufnahme’ (A ComparativeAssessment) (‘Restatement’ or ‘RRR’).⁶⁷ The Restatement, written in German⁶⁸ and translated into English,⁶⁹ examines how the restitution of Nazi-looted art was implemented over the 25-year period following the 1998 Washington Principles in the above mentioned six countries: Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, theUnited Kingdom and Switzerland (where the implementation of the 1998 WashingtonPrinciples has thus far relied on voluntary negotiations),⁷⁰ while considering the numerous divergences between the various jurisdictions. The Restatement was able to gather information, through primary and secondary sources, concerning over 1,300 cases handled by restitution committees and other alternative mechanisms, such as arbitration and negotiations. These include over 600 cases from Germany, nearly 400 fromAustria, approximately 170 from the Netherlands, 150 from France, 20 from theUnited Kingdom and nearly 30 from Switzerland.⁷¹

At the heart of theRestatement lies a comparative, and subsequently, integrative consideration and articulation of eight recurring groups of substantive questions that emerge in addressing claims for restitution for Nazi-era dispossession of cultural property.⁷² In so doing, the Restatement engages in what may be seen as the“soft-law jurisprudence”⁷³that emerged across the six jurisdictions, seeking to distil the common denominators (and differences) evident in each of these issues.⁷⁴

However, the ability to identify a significant and stable common denominator that could point to a joint cross-border “soft-law jurisprudence” in the context of restitution ofNazi-era spoliated cultural property is inherently limited for various reasons.First, many of the restitution claims, especially in Germany – where out of over 600 cases, only 24 were decided by the Advisory Commission – have been resolved by voluntary (and often secret) negotiations, which do not detail the merits of the arguments and the reasons for deciding to opt for a particular solution. Thus, for example, in 2021, the Alte Nazionalgalerie in Berlin reached an agreement with the heirs of Armand Dorville to restitute and buyback the painting A Square in LaRoche-Guyon by Camille Pissarro, which was sold during the June 1942auction. Under the agreement, the painting will remain on display at the Alte Nazionalgalerie, which has held the item since 1961 when it was purchased at aLondon art gallery.⁷⁵However, the details of the agreement are kept largely secret.

Second, the challenge of identifying clear cross-border common denominators for the claims of restitution also results from the fact that different countries have had distinctive approaches toward the concept of “just and fair solutions”. Thus, while some countries have generally followed a more “jurisprudential” approach, which relies essentially on some types of substantive legal principles that would have applied in regular civil legislation if a hard-law claim would not have otherwise been barred by a statute of limitation or other time-based defences, other jurisdictions have emphasised the role of “moral and ethical considerations” as an alternative mode of reasoning. This disparity accordingly leads to ad hoc solutions and a decreased degree of certainty.

Reconsidering the UnderlyingAssumptions of the 1998 Washington Conference Principles: What is theSubstantive Scope of “Just and Fair Solutions”?

The underlying rationale of the 1998 Washington Conference Principles and the 2009 Terezín Declaration, and their call for countries to craft domestic “just and fair solutions”,⁷⁶ should be seen in the broader context by which, by the time these non-binding principles were adopted, civil law remedies and court litigation or similar administrative proceedings were not available to claimants. This was largely so because, as was the case in Germany and Austria, the time-window to submit claims under special post-war laws, regulations and proceedings was closed by the early 1960s.

In this sense, Principle XIof the Washington Conference Principles, which calls on countries to develop“alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues”,⁷⁷ could be seen not so much as expressing a normative“anti-litigation message”,⁷⁸but rather as a practical solution that would enable claimants to have redress, including the possibility of restitution in appropriate cases, even if court litigation or general civil law doctrines are not available to them.

Some countries have sought to meet this challenge by enabling restitution committees to specifically consider “moral and ethical considerations” in their rules of procedure or guidelines. Thus, for example, according to the 2016 rules of procedure of theGerman Advisory Commission (no longer in force), the Commission could “make recommendations for the settlement of the dispute which can also be justified on moral and ethical grounds.”⁷⁹ In the United Kingdom, according to Paragraph 9 of the SpoliationAdvisory Panel’s Constitution and Terms of Reference, the “Panel’s proceedings are an alternative to litigation, not a process of litigation. The Panel will therefore take into account non-legal obligations, such as the moral strength of the claimant's case.”⁸⁰Under Paragraph 15(e), the Panel will “give due weight to the moral strength of the claimant's case” in making its recommendations.⁸¹

Probably the most dominant articulation of “moral or ethical considerations” as a self-standing line of reasoning has been taking place in the Netherlands.⁸² Most notably, this has meant that the Dutch Restitution Committee could “weigh the interests” of the parties, especially if the “circumstances of the loss were unclear,” such as in cases of loss that had taken place before the Nazi invasion to the Netherlands – meaning, inter alia, that “by considering the relative ‘significance’ of an object to a current owner and to a claimant, the interest of a museum in keeping an object on display could be weighed against the emotive interest of heirs of former owners”.⁸³ Accordingly, in a 2018 binding opinion issued by the DutchRestitution Committee in a claim brought by the Lewenstein heirs againstAmsterdam City Council concerning Wassily Kandinsky’s Painting with Houses, theCommittee held that “the interest of the City Council in keeping Painting with Houses accessible for the public outweighed the interests of the Lewenstein heirs”.⁸⁴

The public debate that erupted following this decision spurred the Dutch Government to appoint a committee, chaired by Jakob Kohnstamm, to examine and evaluate the Dutch restitution policy. The Kohnstamm Committee report, entitled Striving for Justice, was published inDecember 2020⁸⁵ and found that the practice of balancing the interests of museums as against those of claimants“did not serve the goal of providing legal redress for the injustice done to victims.”⁸⁶ The report was followed by a new Establishing Decree for the Restitution Committee of 22 April2021, which reflects this new policy.⁸⁷ This change of policy was illustrated in the 2022 binding opinion of the Dutch Restitution Committee in the dispute between the SternLippmann-heirs and Eindhoven City Council concerning another Kandinsky ainting, Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche,⁸⁸ which ordered the restitution of the painting – reflecting both anew evidentiary assessment and a change of policy.⁸⁹

However, as the final subsection of this article shows, other countries are taking a different approach toward devising a “just and fair solution” – one that moves closer to adopting a lex specialis for Nazi-era spoliation of cultural property, even if the process is not carried out by court litigation, therefore tilting toward a more “hard law” approach, or at the least, a more clear-cut jurisprudential analysis.

Towards a New Generation of“Lex Specialis” for the Restitution of Spoliated Cultural Property

Out of all major jurisdictions that actively address claims for the restitution of Nazi-era spoliation of cultural property, the United States is probably the one that most clearly adopts a “hard law” approach in advancing the 1998 WashingtonConference Principles. This is so not only considering the above-surveyed 2016HEAR Act and the subsequent 2025 HEAR Act – which facilitate civil litigation while also eliminating some legal defences, such as laches, in the new version of the Act.

Moreover, US law-enforcement agencies are increasingly using criminal-law tools to promote restitution of objects from American museums and collectors to heirs of pre-Nazi-era owners.

This is done most prominently by the New York State Antiquities Trafficking Unit, operating within the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.⁹⁰ Specifically, the New York State offence of Criminal Possession ofStolen Property, which is divided into five degrees based on the value of the property, has been utilised, particularly because it is considered a continuing offence.⁹¹

In the context ofNazi-looted cultural property, these criminal law mechanisms have been recently used in respect of a collection of 81 works by Egon Schiele, which were owned, prior to the Nazi rule, by the Jewish-Austrian cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum. Alongside civil claims filed by Grünbaum’s heirs, the Manhattan DistrictAttorney’s Office has also become involved in the matter by exercising its criminal jurisdiction.⁹²The District Attorney’s Office has seized several of Schiele’s works from public and private collections throughout the United States,⁹³ with one work remaining under legal contention: the 1916 painting Russian War Prisoner, acquired in 1966by the Art institute of Chicago. As of early 2026, this case is pending before a court of appeals.⁹⁴

As this article has shown,France presents a unique example, where civil litigation exists alongside the process of submitting claims to the French Restitution Committee, the CIVS –although the latter channel covers a broader array of cases extending to the entire Nazi era (1933 to 1945) and not only to the period of Nazi occupation ofFrance (1940 to 1944) that is covered by the Order of 21 April 1945. That said, there is little doubt that the jurisprudential principles set forth by the Cour de cassation in its interpretation of the Order of 21 April 1945 will affect the reasoning applied by the CIVS in future claims.

Moreover, the decision in the Dorville case may lead claimants to actively pursue the civil jurisdiction channel available under the Order of21 April 1945. One such recent example is a court claim submitted in early 2026by the heirs of a Jewish art dealer, Max Julius Braunthal, against theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York. According to the claim, Braunthal was forced to sell a painting by Camille Pissarro, Haystacks, Morning, Éragny, under duress in 1941, during Germany’s occupation of France. The painting was bequeathed to the Museum by its former chairman, Douglas Dillon, more than two decades ago.⁹⁵ According to one commentator, although a French ruling would not be the final word in the case, such a judgment could help the plaintiffs if they bring a subsequent suit in the United States:

if a French court nullifies the 1941 sale, the heirs would likely argue to a New York court that any subsequent title was incurably defective, and that it would revert to the victim’s heirs. That would be a strong argument standing alone.⁹⁶

Probably the best illustration of how the substantive norms and procedures for addressing claims for the restitution of Nazi-era spoliated cultural property could tilt toward amore “hard law” approach, even if the resolution of claims is not done by courts, but rather by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms, is the new binding arbitration introduced by the current reform in Germany. Beyond the fact that this procedure would be governed by the general rules for arbitration in Germany, namely that arbitration awards are formally enforceable in Germany– the arbitration award also has a broad res judicata effect and can thus preclude further proceedings, even abroad.⁹⁷

Moreover, the new“Assessment Framework for Examining and Deciding on the Treatment ofNazi-looted Cultural Property”⁹⁸ looks very much like a lex specialis – a system of binding legal norms that are tailored specifically to the resolution of such claims by arbitration tribunals. The AssessmentFramework does not address “moral and ethical considerations” in giving content to the 1998 Washington Conference Principle of “just and fair solutions.”Rather, the Assessment Framework offers a detailed framework for addressing, inter alia, the proof of ownership prior to the Nazi era (Section 5), “provision of evidence and reduction of the burden of proof” (Section 2), creation of “presumptions” in various circumstances for the establishment of a “sufficiently close connection” between the loss and persecution as a result of the Nazi regime (Section 8), the potential scope of remedies that may comprise “just and fair solutions” (Section 11), and so forth.⁹⁹ In these and other respects Germany is moving closer to a “hard law” approach in resolving claims for the restitution of Nazi-era spoliation of cultural property even if this process is done through ADR.

In conclusion, going back to the concept of the “transnational judicial dialogue” discussed above, it seems that the decision of the French Cour de cassation in the Dorville Case might have an influence not only on the merits of similar cases discussed in other jurisdictions (whether by courts or alternative mechanisms), but it also signifies and further intensifies the process by which the resolution of claims, more than 80 years after the end of the Second World War, will move back toward the type of lex specialis and jurisprudential principles that typified post-war laws in Europe.

‍