Fraud on Our Heritage: Towards a Rigorous Standard for the Good Faith Acquisition of Antiquities

Fincham, D. (2010), ‘Fraud on Our Heritage: Towards a Rigorous Standard for the Good Faith Acquisition of Antiquities’, Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 37 (1).

Good faith allows buyers of works of art and antiquities to secure ownership of objects, so long as they do not know for certain that an object may be looted or stolen.  As many have pointed out, this leads to conscious avoidance of information about an object’s history. This article argues the standards for good faith are too lax, and the consequence is a large scale fraud exacted on the understanding of our past.