Religion, Culture & Governance
Trophy Art Law: As An Illustration of the Current Legislative Process in Russia
Alexander N. Domrin
Senior Research Fellow, Comparative Constitutional Law and Parliamentary Division, Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law, Moscow Russia and Global Law Faculty, New York University School of Law

If there is any particular piece of Russian legislation, which in the years of the Second Russian Republic, has stirred major controversy in Russia and abroad and made the biggest number of headlines in Western media, it is probably the federal Law on Cultural Values Transferred into the USSR as the Result of World War II and Remaining in the Russian Federation, also known as Trophy Art Law.

Apart from the context of Russian-German relations and international property rights, which have been quite extensively studied in a number of publications in the U.S. (although, with a rare exception, from predominantly anti-Russian positions), the controversy around the Trophy Art Law is quite important for a more adequate understanding of peculiarities of the current legislative process in the Russian Federation and the role of all three branches of government in it.