Law as Heritage
Essay by Kyrill Kunakhovich and Lisa Stuckey
In: tbc. working through heritage concepts, no. 2 (2025) (series edited by Margareta von Oswald). inherit, Universität zu Berlin, https://doi.org/10.18452/34376
Abstract: The starting point for this essay is a caption from the exhibition Loot. 10 Stories (Humboldt Forum, 2024–2025), which states: ‘Looting is a phenomenon of all times. Throughout history, artworks and objects have been unlawfully appropriated and forcibly taken from vulnerable populations in military and political conflicts, then placed in international museum collections.’ The word ‘unlawfully’ stands out, since law was used to justify so many of the seizures chronicled in the exhibition. To describe such appropriations as ‘unlawful’ is to ignore the law’s potential complicity in regimes of domination and furthermore elevates the law to a position of unjustified authority. Challenging such an understanding, the authors of this essay suggest that thinking of law as heritage can further legal and heritage studies alike. Lisa Stuckey looks at the ‘Third World Approach to International Law’ to explore law as difficult heritage, applying the legal notion of ‘remedy’ to an exemplary case of entanglements between legal and heritage discourses in the conflict of interest between the legalization of psychedelics and the protection of Indigenous plant knowledge. Kyrill Kunakhovich turns to common law, exploring how the use of judicial precedent both mirrors and illuminates the workings of heritage regimes. Together, the authors ask what the notion of law as heritage might share with, and add to, such concepts as heritage law and the heritage of law.