Anne-Marie Carstens

Professor Carstens is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and speaks and publishes widely on issues of cultural heritage and international law. She is the author of numerous articles and the forthcoming book Safeguarding Cultural Property During Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press). She received her JD from Georgetown University Law Center and holds a DPhil in Law from Oxford University.

She has served as an expert advisor on cultural property at the U.S. Department of State and was appointed to an International Law Association committee drafting a report on protecting cultural heritage during armed conflict. Her scholarship has appeared in the Minnesota Law Review, the Harvard International Law Journal, the American Journal of International Law, the Stanford Journal of International Law, and the British Year Book of International Law, among others.

Professor Carstens' presentation, "Damnatio Memoriae: Do Political Monuments Qualify as 'Cultural Property'?" examines a question as old as antiquity and as current as today's headlines. Familiar scenes of statue-toppling accompany many regime changes, yet contemporary international humanitarian law prohibits the unnecessary destruction or desecration of cultural property during armed conflict, including in the immediate aftermath of a regime change precipitated by hostilities. Her paper investigates whether such acts constitute violations of the law of armed conflict, tracing how the answer becomes entangled with broader debates over the protection of political status and political groups, and whether protections may ever legally dissipate from monuments that would otherwise qualify.