On ‘Organized Crime’ in the illicit antiquities trade: moving beyond the definitional debate

The extent to which ‘organized crime’ is involved in illicit antiquities trafficking is unknown and frequently debated. This paper explores the significance and scale of the illicit antiquities trade as a unique transnational criminal phenomenon that is often said to be perpetrated by and exhibit traits of so-called ‘organized crime.’ The definitional debate behind the term ‘organized crime’ is considered as a potential problem impeding our understanding of its existence or extent in illicit antiquities trafficking, and a basic progression-based model is then suggested as a new tool to move beyond the definitional debate for future research that may help to elucidate the actors, processes and criminal dynamics taking place within the illicit antiquities trade from source to market. The paper concludes that researchers should focus not on the question of whether organized criminals- particularly in a traditionally conceived, mafia-type stereotypical sense- are involved in the illicit antiquities trade, but instead on the structure and progression of antiquities trafficking itself that embody both organized and criminal dynamics

Value and doubt: the persuasive power of 'authenticity' in the antiquities market

No abstract available

Choose Your Laws Carefully: Executive Authority to Unilaterally Withdraw the United States Outer Continental Shelf from Leasing Disposition

Congress enacted the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to both exert federal jurisdiction over the submerged lands of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf and establish the legal framework for America’s offshore energy production regime. Section 12(a) of OCSLA is a short yet potent provision that grants a president the authority to withdraw unleased offshore lands from leasing disposition, effectively banning any form of energy exploration or production. In recent decades, presidents have embraced section 12(a) not only to ban offshore energy production, but also to protect the marine environment itself. Presidents have also utilized a different federal law, the Antiquities Act of 1906 (Antiquities Act), to create marine national monuments, providing general protection for areas of rich biodiversity, scientific interest, and cultural heritage. Interestingly, both OCSLA and the Antiquities Act achieve the same end results: offshore energy production is prohibited and the marine environment is protected. The crucial distinction between the two laws, though, is the ability to provide permanent protection. A close study of these laws reveals that only one indeed provides the intended lasting protection that presidents have sought: the Antiquities Act. This Note probes the theory of executive authority to unilaterally remove America’s submerged lands from leasing disposition. Specifically, it centers on President Barack Obama’s twin December 2017 offshore withdrawals in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. President Obama utilized OCSLA to ban offshore energy production, but he framed the withdrawals as a way to permanently protect each area’s unique marine biodiversity, scientific value, and cultural significance to indigenous inhabitants. This Note concludes that a president seeking such lasting protection must use the Antiquities Act in lieu of OCSLA. The Note examines the relevant statutory histories, judicial inquiries, and precedential usage of these laws and argues that OCSLA’s protection falls incredibly short. This Note is particularly relevant given the Trump administration’s effort to roll back the Obama administration’s bans on offshore energy production. President Donald Trump’s recent executive actions will surely test the conclusions of this Note

The cultural capitalists: notes on the ongoing reconfiguration of trafficking culture in Asia

Most analysis of the international flows of the illicit art market has described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe. As the locus of consumptive global economic power shifts, however, these traditional flows are pulled in other directions: notably for the present commentary, towards and within Asia

Performative regulation: a case study in how powerful people avoid criminal labels

This paper explores the role of invested powerful business actors in the criminalisation process as applied to the illicit antiquities market. We present a case study of the precise mechanics of the role played by trade interests in the formation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003. This process involved the trade’s entering appearance in the legislative process and neutralising the possible constraining effects on its members of the new criminal offence which was to be created. We begin by exploring the political, historical and economic context in which discussion of the terms of the 2003 Act first began. We then follow the Act from its genesis through its various stages of drafting and re-drafting, to its enactment. This case study of a single piece of legislation provides further data to add to the line of prior research that illustrates that powerful white-collar criminals, as well as sometimes preventing criminal legislation entering the statute books, can also influence the design of criminal legislation that does enter the statute books in order to protect themselves and their own business interests. We also use this case study of a process of contemporary law-making to outline the concept of performative regulation: broadly, that which in appearance serves political ends but in practice effects an inconsequential level of control

Coloring Outside The Lines: A Response to Professor Seamon’s Dismantling Monuments

In Dismantling Monuments, Professor Richard H. Seamon defends President Donald Trump’s recent proclamations modifying the boundaries of two national monuments, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, that Presidents Clinton and Obama each designated at the ends of their Administrations. Professor Seamon is not alone in making these arguments, as I am not alone in saying that Professor Seamon’s arguments, while well-intentioned, are wrong. He exaggerates the persuasive power of congressional silence. He elevates the importance of the statute’s original intent. Professor Seamon and I read the text and legislative history of the Antiquities Act differently—he sees unlimited presidential power, I see limits. But rather than engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Professor Seamon over who is right with respect to the specific arguments we each make, I think it may be more useful, certainly more interesting, to broaden the discussion to include: (1) the importance over time of an Act’s original intent; (2) the correct role of the Take Care Clause in the debate we are having; (3) the use of the interpretive canon of textual ambiguity to resolve our differences; and (4) the impact of his arguments on the separation of powers doctrine

Whose Lands? Which Public? Trump\u27s National Monument Proclamations and the Shape of Public-Lands Law

President Trump issued a proclamation in December 2017 purporting to remove two million acres in southern Utah from national monument status, radically shrinking the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and splitting the Bears Ears National Monument into two residual protected areas. Whether the President has the power to revise or revoke existing monuments under the Antiquities Act, which creates the national monument system, is a new question of law for a 112-year-old statute that has been used by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to protect roughly fifteen million acres of federal land and hundreds of millions of marine acres. If President Trump’s shrinkages stand, they will be the largest removal of public lands from protected status in U.S. history, and will put the remaining national monuments on the chopping block. This article advances a novel theory showing that the President lacks the power to revise or revoke monuments. The Antiquities Act gives a power only to protect public lands, not to remove them from protection. Arguments developed so far in litigation and scholarship fail to recognize a general feature of public-lands law: It consistently denies the President the power unilaterally to remove lands from statutorily protected categories once they are placed within those categories. The Antiquities Act should be read to be consistent with this field-wide pattern. The article explicates the reasons for this pattern. Generally speaking, public-lands law has been very little theorized; but it needs a theory now. Public-lands law is a field defined by structured normative pluralism. It integrates a range of deeply conflicting public-lands purposes, from mining and drilling to wilderness preservation, across a range of statutes and agencies and acreage totaling nearly a third of the land area of the United States. The asymmetric premise against any Presidential power remove lands from protection is rooted in this structure, specifically the President’s obligation to preserve for Congress the option of protecting lands, and the dangers of hasty or corrupt Presidential action. The article traces these rationales across the history of statutory, executive, and judicial articulations of public-lands law and shows that they apply to the present Antiquities Act dispute. The article also highlights the political and cultural dimension of the dispute: a series of three-way conflicts among “public-lands populists” who seek increased use of and access to public lands (whose agenda the Trump Administration has incorporated into its economic and ethno-national populism), recreationists and environmentalists, and indigenous communities in the Bears Ears region. Conflicts among these groups amount to fights over collective identity--the nature of the “public” that public lands should serve. This dimension of the conflict does not fall outside the doctrinal analysis of the Antiquities Act. Rather, with a clear theoretical view of public-lands law, it is possible to see that these agendas are already integral to the field itself. They are central threads of its pluralism, and their competing claims fit within its structure. An account of the larger field of cultural conflict both enriches the theory of public-lands law and helps to show how the field should resolve the present fight

Whose Lands? Which Public? Trump\u27s National Monument Proclamations and the Shape of Public-Lands Law

President Trump issued a proclamation in December 2017 purporting to remove two million acres in southern Utah from national monument status, radically shrinking the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and splitting the Bears Ears National Monument into two residual protected areas. Whether the President has the power to revise or revoke existing monuments under the Antiquities Act, which creates the national monument system, is a new question of law for a 112-year-old statute that has been used by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to protect roughly fifteen million acres of federal land and hundreds of millions of marine acres. If President Trump’s shrinkages stand, they will be the largest removal of public lands from protected status in U.S. history, and will put the remaining national monuments on the chopping block. This article advances a novel theory showing that the President lacks the power to revise or revoke monuments. The Antiquities Act gives a power only to protect public lands, not to remove them from protection. Arguments developed so far in litigation and scholarship fail to recognize a general feature of public-lands law: It consistently denies the President the power unilaterally to remove lands from statutorily protected categories once they are placed within those categories. The Antiquities Act should be read to be consistent with this field-wide pattern. The article explicates the reasons for this pattern. Generally speaking, public-lands law has been very little theorized; but it needs a theory now. Public-lands law is a field defined by structured normative pluralism. It integrates a range of deeply conflicting public-lands purposes, from mining and drilling to wilderness preservation, across a range of statutes and agencies and acreage totaling nearly a third of the land area of the United States. The asymmetric premise against any Presidential power remove lands from protection is rooted in this structure, specifically the President’s obligation to preserve for Congress the option of protecting lands, and the dangers of hasty or corrupt Presidential action. The article traces these rationales across the history of statutory, executive, and judicial articulations of public-lands law and shows that they apply to the present Antiquities Act dispute. The article also highlights the political and cultural dimension of the dispute: a series of three-way conflicts among “public-lands populists” who seek increased use of and access to public lands (whose agenda the Trump Administration has incorporated into its economic and ethno-national populism), recreationists and environmentalists, and indigenous communities in the Bears Ears region. Conflicts among these groups amount to fights over collective identity--the nature of the “public” that public lands should serve. This dimension of the conflict does not fall outside the doctrinal analysis of the Antiquities Act. Rather, with a clear theoretical view of public-lands law, it is possible to see that these agendas are already integral to the field itself. They are central threads of its pluralism, and their competing claims fit within its structure. An account of the larger field of cultural conflict both enriches the theory of public-lands law and helps to show how the field should resolve the present fight