Recent years have seen growing interest in political theory relating to questions of rectificatory justice. Sometimes such questions involve broad macro-level questions: what kind of state action would be required if one-time colonial powers were to effect reparations in relation to their former colonies? Sometimes, they focus on more specific policy areas: such as the repayment of specific sums of money (for example, wages that were wrongfully withheld from slaves); reparations for historic unjust carbon emissions; or the specific duties of former colonies to admit migrants from present-day peoples whom they historically wronged. Relatively little has been written in this regard on the specific question of the restitution of cultural property, though the body of literature dealing with such questions is now, belatedly, expanding. This paper seeks to contribute to this discourse by drawing upon Simon Caney’s distinction between integrationism and isolationism (originally formulated in relation to climate change) to ask to what extent principles of cultural property justice should be understood in insolation from, or be integrated with, wider questions of both corrective and distributive justice. The paper explores this question by focussing on the different levels of real-world decision making in relation to cultural property. While much existing writing focuses on the level of the state, and while this is indeed important, much real-world decision making on cultural property restitution actually takes place elsewhere: in public and private museums; in other institutions, such as both public and private universities; other charities; and in private households. The paper unpacks the differences between these decision-making contexts, and asks to what extent the responsibilities and vulnerabilities of the different decision-makers make a difference as to how they should seek to effect reparation for past injustice. Examples here include relatively straight forward constraints, such the fiduciary responsibilities which many jurisdictions place on charitable trustees, as well as more complicated questions of how those recruited to particular roles should balance considerations of justice with the interests and expectations of their own institutions, and other sources of value, such as the preservation and accessibility of cultural knowledge. The paper draws on a wide range of real-world restitution claims – some settled, and some yet to be resolved – to argue in favour of a duty to restitute that is both ambitious in its intention to contribute to wider reparative processes, and potentially to act within a vanguard for reparative movements, but sensitive to the different institutional contexts in which decision-making about cultural property takes place.
