Newswise — When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, all property in Cuba became community property controlled by the state. Castro's nationalization of private property generated thousands of dispossessed claimants. What will happen in a post-Castro Cuba?
Creighton University School of Law has been awarded a two-year $750,000 federal grant from the United States Agency for International Development to study this problem. Supported by USAID's Cuban Transition to Democracy Program, the grant will fund Creighton's creation of a model to establish a bilateral U.S.-Cuba property claims tribunal. Washington's goal is to have this model in place, along with others, for eventual use to ease Cuba's post-Castro transition to democracy.
Dean Patrick J. Borchers, an international expert in conflict of laws, will lead a cross-disciplinary team of six people developing this model along with Political Science Professor Erika Moreno Ph.D., a Latin America specialist from the University of Iowa, and James Wunsch Ph.D., chairman of Creighton Department of Political Science. Other team members include Richard Witmer Ph.D., also of Creighton's political science department, Arthur Pearlstein, director of the Law School's Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, and Creighton's international law specialist Michael J. Kelly,
The grant calls for a two-year factual/claims investigation, extensive multi-level legal analysis, significant field work in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and legitimacy modeling on sophisticated social science computer software. Adolfo A. Franco, assistant administrator of USAID for Latin America and the Caribbean, and David E. Mutchler, USAID Cuba Program Director, will join Borchers, the research team and Creighton University President the Rev. John P. Schlegel, S.J., at a public award signing ceremony at Creighton University School of Law on November 16th at 2:00 p.m., in the Law School Commons followed by a reception.
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