Fate Of The Treasured 'Cranachs' Continues – Part 2 And The Act Of State Doctrine

As noted in the below post, last week the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") declined to hear an art provenance case, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena et al. v. Marei Von Saher, which has a rather long history as well as the artworks at issue. The claims involve the fate of two life-size panels, Adam and Eve (collectively, "the Cranachs"), circa 1530, painted by renowned German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. The Cranachs are part of the permanent collection of the Norton Simon Museum of Art ("Museum") in Pasadena, California.

As plaintiff in the initial action filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California back in 2007, Marei Von Saher claims she is the rightful owner of the Cranachs, which were forcibly purchased by the Nazis from her late husband's family during World War II. The district court dismissed Von Saher's complaint as insufficient to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and such dismissal led to her appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In a detailed opinion last June, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the district court's dismissal of Von Saher's action. The panel held that because the Cranachs were never subject to postwar internal restitution proceedings abroad in the Netherlands, there was no conflict of Von Saher's claims with any federal policy on recovered art. The panel held that Von Saher's claims against the Museum and the remedies sought did not conflict with foreign policy, and instead this was a dispute between private parties. The panel remanded the case for "further development" on the issue of whether the litigation of the case implicated the Act of State Doctrine.

Under the Act of State Doctrine, "[e]very sovereign state is bound to respect the independence of every other sovereign state, and the courts of one country will not sit in judgment on...