From "Lamentation and Liturgy to Litigation": The Holocaust-Era Restitution Movement as a Model for Bringing Armenian Genocide-Era Restitution Suits in American Courts

Marquette Law Review, Dec 2011

The numerous Holocaust restitution civil lawsuits that began to be filed in the late 1990s and still continue today have yielded over $8 billion in payouts to still-living Holocaust survivors and the heirs of Holocaust victims. The precedent created by the Holocaust restitution movement now makes it possible for suits stemming from the material losses during the Armenian Genocide likewise to be considered by American courts. The Armenian Genocide-era restitution cases filed to date have targeted entities that, while allegedly profiting from the Armenian Genocide, nevertheless were tangential actors to the genocide. The next step in the burgeoning Armenian Genocide-era restitution movement would be the filing of suits against the Republic of Turkey and its state-owned enterprises that directly profited from the genocide. Until recently, suits against these foreign sovereign defendants would have been barred by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). However, recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit interpreting FSIA in relation to Holocaust restitution have now made possible, for the first time in history, actions against the Republic of Turkey and its state-owned entities for acts committed during the Armenian Genocide. This article provides a blueprint for such suits.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5097&context=mulr

From "Lamentation and Liturgy to Litigation": The Holocaust-Era Restitution Movement as a Model for Bringing Armenian Genocide-Era Restitution Suits in American Courts

Repository Citation Michael J. Bazyler, From "Lamentation and Liturgy to Litigation": Th e Holocaust-Era Restitution Movement as a Model for Bringing Armenian Genocide-Era Restitution Suits in American Courts From "Lamentation and Liturg y to Litigation": The Holocaust-Era Restitution Movement as a Model for Bringing Armenian Genocide-Era Restitution Suits in American Courts Michael J. Bazyler Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr Part of the Law Commons - Article 3 FROM “LAMENTATION AND LITURGY TO LITIGATION”: THE HOLOCAUST-ERA RESTITUTION MOVEMENT AS A MODEL FOR BRINGING ARMENIAN GENOCIDEERA RESTITUTION SUITS IN AMERICAN COURTS MICHAEL J. BAZYLER* The numerous Holocaust restitution civil lawsuits that began to be filed in the late 1990s and still continue today have yielded over $8 billion in payouts to still-living Holocaust survivors and the heirs of Holocaust victims. The precedent created by the Holocaust restitution movement now makes it possible for suits stemming from the material losses during the Armenian Genocide likewise to be considered by American courts. The Armenian Genocide-era restitution cases filed to date have targeted entities that, while allegedly profiting from the Armenian Genocide, nevertheless were tangential actors to the genocide. The next step in the burgeoning Armenian Genocide-era restitution movement would be the filing of suits against the Republic of Turkey and its state-owned enterprises that directly profited from the genocide. Until recently, suits against these foreign sovereign defendants would have been barred by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). However, recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit interpreting FSIA in relation to Holocaust restitution have now made possible, for the first time in history, actions against the Republic of Turkey and its state-owned * Professor of Law and The “1939” Club Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, Chapman University School of Law, California; former Research Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.; former Research Fellow and holder of the Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Chair for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority of Israel), Jerusalem. The author expresses his appreciation to student research assistants Ani Anaiyan, Blair Russell, and Eli Economou for their invaluable assistance with this project. In the interest of full disclosure, the author has acted as legal advisor to some of the Armenian Genocide-era suits discussed in this article. The author was not involved in any of the Holocaust-era suits discussed herein. MARQUETTE LAW REVIEW [95:245 entities for acts committed during the Armenian Genocide. This article provides a blueprint for such suits. For the first time [the Armenian community] has gone beyond lamentation and liturgy to litigation, from picketing and going to church every April 24 [the Armenian Day of Remembrance] and mourning to taking legal action. . . . . Holocaust victims’ heirs showed me the way.1 I. INTRODUCTION A recurring theme in writings about the Armenian Genocide is the focus on efforts to obtain recognition of the genocide from the Republic of Turkey.2 One also finds, in some instances, discussion about using international and multinational organizations like the United Nations and the European Union to seek some form of reparation for the few living survivors and the much larger group of descendants of the mass murder of Armenians committed in Ottoman Turkey between 1915 and 1923.3 This Article takes a different approach by focusing on the role of United States domestic law in dealing with the Armenian Genocide. It specifically examines the use of American-style civil litigation as an 1. Beverly Beyette, He Stands Up in the Name of Armenians, L.A. TIMES, Apr. 27, 2001, at E1 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Armenian-American attorney Vartkes Yeghiayan, who represented plaintiffs in Armenian Genocide-era restitution suits). 2. Roger W. Smith, The Armenian Genocide: Memory, Politics, and the Future, in THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: HISTORY, POLITICS, ETHICS 1, 7 (Richard G. Hovannisian ed., 1992) (stating that “Turkey will not acknowledge the genocide, but public recognition of it by other countries may go some way toward healing the rage that destroys.”); see also PHILIP HERBST, TALKING TERRORISM: A DICTIONARY OF LOADED LANGUAGE OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 77 (2003) (“Turkey does not recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide,” but instead refers to the genocide as “a tragic civil war initiated by Armenian nationalists”). 3. See, e.g., SEDAT LAÇINER ET AL., EUROPEAN UNION WITH TURKEY: THE POSSIBLE IMPACT OF TURKEY’S MEMBERSHIP ON THE EUROPEAN UNION 66–70 (2005) (discussing how Turkey’s non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide presents obstacles to Turkish entry (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5097&context=mulr

Michael J Bazyler. From "Lamentation and Liturgy to Litigation": The Holocaust-Era Restitution Movement as a Model for Bringing Armenian Genocide-Era Restitution Suits in American Courts, Marquette Law Review, 2011, Volume 95, Issue 1,