Toon van Mierlo, Professor of Civil Law at Erasmus School of Law, will take office on 15 August as the new chair of the Dutch Advisory Committee on Restitution Requests for Cultural Goods and the Second World War (the Restitution Committee). This committee advises on Nazi-looted art in the Netherlands. The Restitutions Committee was looking for two lawyers to hold the roles of chair and member. Van Mierlo is delighted to take on the role of president and, in this way, to put his motto ‘striving for justice’ into practice.
Established in 2001, the Restitutions Committee is responsible for dealing with claims by Holocaust survivors whose works of art were looted in 1940-1945. The committee advises the State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science. Besides a new chair, the committee will soon have a new member, Professor of Legal History and Civil Law at Radboud University Corjo Jansen, making the committee complete again. The Restitutions Committee has seven members and comprises lawyers, historians with knowledge of the Second World War and people with art-historical and museum knowledge. The State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science makes appointments for a four-year term.
Moral obligation
“I am very honoured to fulfil this position, where I expect a lot from the multidisciplinarity within the Restitutions Committee. Legal-technically, the work is an extension of my academic work in property law and civil procedural law”, Van Mierlo states. He also sets great store by the (inter)national reputation of Dutch restitution policy: “I will be committed to safeguarding that reputation together with the other members of the Restitutions Committee. I also feel this is a moral obligation towards the many victims of Nazi-looted art and their relatives. This art is one of the last tangible changes of legal restoration for the original owners and their heirs.”
About Toon van Mierlo
Van Mierlo has been a professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam since 1993. Since 2016, he has also been a professor at the University of Groningen. He studied law in Nijmegen and obtained his PhD in the same city in 1988. Besides being a professor at two universities, Van Mierlo holds several additional positions. Among other things, he is a law partner at HabrakenRutten and often acts as an arbitrator in (inter)national arbitration cases.
- Professor