Supreme Court Business Review: Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp

In the third episode of S&C’s Supreme Court Business Review series, hosts Judd Littleton and Julia Malkina are joined by Sharon Cohen Levin, former head of the Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, to discuss the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp.

 

The case considered whether an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allowed the heirs of a group of Jewish art dealers to bring a lawsuit against Germany in U.S. federal court based on the Nazi regime’s expropriation of German medieval relics. The Court held that the heirs’ claim did not fall within the FSIA’s expropriation exception and therefore was barred by sovereign immunity.

 

Sharon shares the implications of this decision for future FSIA litigants, including heirs of Holocaust victims and victims of other genocides seeking to recover property taken by foreign governments.

 

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