Austria v. Altmann
United States Supreme Court
541 U.S. 677 (2004)
Altmann (plaintiff) learned that art seized by Nazis or Austria (defendant) from her uncle after World War II had ended up in the Austrian Gallery. She sued Austria and the Gallery in federal court to recover the art, and the defendants moved to dismiss on sovereign-immunity grounds, arguing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), enacted in 1976, should not apply retroactively to conduct, the wartime seizure, that predated both the statute and the United States' 1952 adoption of the "restrictive theory" of sovereign immunity. The lower courts denied the motion to dismiss, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether the FSIA applies retroactively to conduct occurring before the FSIA was enacted, and before the United States adopted the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity.