Codifying Cultural Heritage: Why United States Criminal Law Suddenly Treats Our Rare Materials with Respect

Abstract

“The Cultural Heritage Guideline will, in my opinion, prove to be one of the most important of all the sentencing guidelines for the long-term benefit of our nation,” said United States Attorney (now federal magistrate judge) Paul Warner. He was testifying before the United States Sentencing Commission, which was about to get serious with cultural crimes. He was also echoing what he had written in a letter to the Commission a mere three months earlier. In that letter, which fully addressed the harm caused to the American people by crimes against cultural resources, he explained that “[f]ew undertakings by the . . .