William Charron, co-leader of Pryor Cashman's Art Law practice, will receive the 2019 Distinguished Legal Writing Award from The Burton Awards and Law360. This is Charron's second Burton Award; he received his first in 2010.
Established to honor the finest accomplishments in law, including writing, reform and public service, the Burton Award is given to only 30 articles, chosen from nominations submitted by the country's 1,000 largest law firms.
In his winning article, The Problem of Purely Procedural Preemption Presented by the Federal HEAR Act, Charron writes "the underlying purpose of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016, which is to return Nazi-looted artwork to victims or their families, is undeniably laudable. It is equally clear that victims and their families can often face obstacles to gathering evidence from the war that would demonstrate Nazi theft in court. The HEAR Act strives to address these concerns by imposing a federal statute of limitations over all state law causes of action that would enable restitution of Nazi-stolen art."
Yet, in spite of the important needs the Act aims to serve, Charron argues that courts must hold that the HEAR Act violates the 10th Amendment and principles of federalism.
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