Sprigman on The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law @CJSprigman @nyulaw

Christopher Jon Sprigman, NYU School of Law; NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, is publishing The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law Forthcoming 2024, in Tutela & Restauro (the annual journal of the Soprintendenza archeologia belle arti e paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Firenze e le province di Pistoia e Prato). Here is the abstract.

This article, the published version of a closing keynote talk given at a conference on Italian cultural heritage and cultural property law held in 2022 at the University of Florence, describes the loosely-constituted, largely uncodified "Jeffersonian" model of cultural heritage law that operates in the U.S. The Jeffersonian model understands cultural heritage not primarily as a thing to be protected, but as a thing to be used. This model is concerned primarily with the interests of the living – specifically, our collective interest in producing today’s culture, drawing on the past but also reworking it in ways that may preserve or may destabilize the past. This model is largely indifferent to and perhaps in practice even hostile to cultural particularism and to the stability of any particular culture. The role of IP rights, in this model, is not to preserve old culture. It is to encourage people to make new culture. The differences between the Jeffersonian model and the more protectionist cultural heritage and cultural property models that hold sway in Italy and across Europe grow out of deep differences in how different cultures understand what leads to human flourishing. The European model situates individuals within a particular culture; it is based on the notion that some well-defined group identity is central to an individual’s flourishing. On the other hand, the Jeffersonian model is both more cosmopolitan and more present-focused. The logic of these models rests on differing beliefs about the relative importance of individual autonomy versus group identity, and about the virtues of more rapid cultural change versus relative cultural stability.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.