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