Heritage Policy and Law
The course examines the instruments through which heritage is designated, regulated, and defended, from international conventions to the national statutory and administrative systems through which they take effect. Students read primary legal texts clause by clause and work with comparative case material from four legal systems, asking what each instrument makes visible, what it leaves outside its scope, and where authority finally rests. Assessment is by a governance instrument drafted for a named organisation and defended against the conventions and statutes under which it would operate.
Outcomes
At the end of this course you will be able to:
- Distinguish the major international heritage instruments by scope, binding force, and category of heritage protected.
- Analyze a national statutory preservation system, including designation criteria, review procedures, and consultation requirements.
- Prepare a model designation or review submission for a selected property, practice, or community using the requirements of the chosen system.
- Evaluate what a given instrument protects and what it leaves outside its scope, using evidence from at least two legal systems.
- Compare how legal systems distribute decision-making authority among public bodies, expert institutions, and heritage communities.
- Analyze how governance arrangements shape community voice, interpretive authority, and mission continuity over time.
- Develop a model governance instrument for a selected organization and defend its design in relation to relevant conventions, statutes, and alternative arrangements.
The Eight Modules
1What Counts as Heritage, and Who DecidesRead
At the end of this module you will be able to explain how the category of heritage expanded from monuments to practices to communities, and evaluate the tangible and intangible distinction as a policy choice rather than a natural fact. What counts as heritage decides who counts as its holder. Every instrument in this course draws that line somewhere, and the module teaches you to see where.
2The International InstrumentsRead
At the end of this module you will be able to distinguish the major international heritage instruments by scope, binding force, and category of heritage protected. The module works through the World Heritage Convention, the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, the Convention on Cultural Expressions, the Faro Convention with its heritage communities as right-holders, and the Culture 2030 indicators. What binds and what merely commends is the module's central sorting.
3National Statutory SystemsRead
At the end of this module you will be able to operate the machinery of a national preservation system: the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, Section 106 review, National Register criteria and nomination, NAGPRA, and the roles of the Park Service, the SHPOs, and the National Trust. One comparator system runs alongside for perspective. The register here is practical. You learn the procedures by working them.
4Designation and Its ConsequencesRead
At the end of this module you will be able to analyze what listing does and to whom: property value, tax credit, tourism pressure, displacement. The module follows a designation outward into its consequences and asks where consultation reaches for community authority and where it falls short. Protection and burden arrive in the same envelope. This module opens it.
5The Building and the PracticeRead
At the end of this module you will be able to assess the obligations that come with historic fabric: adaptive reuse, stewardship duties, treatment standards, and the demands of living heritage. The module reads compliance as experienced by an organization with no legal department. The building and the practice each make claims. The module teaches you to hold both.
6Mission IntegrityRead
At the end of this module you will be able to design the guardrails that hold a heritage organization's mission: protective mechanisms written into governing documents, funding agreements, and board practice. You will trace how boards and funders navigate competing pressures and preserve mission through structure rather than good intentions. Drift arrives one reasonable choice at a time, and each choice is defensible on the day it is made. The module equips you with the instruments to see mission moving and the toolbox to hold it while it can still be held.
7Comparative CasesRead
At the end of this module you will be able to compare four legal systems through one case each, using a common question set: where authority sat, who held the ground, and what was protected in practice. The cases put every instrument from the earlier modules under working conditions. What a system protects on paper and what it protected in the event are two findings, and you will learn to hold them side by side. The module equips you to read any jurisdiction's promises against its record.
8Protective StewardshipRead
At the end of this module you will be able to draft constitutional-choice principles for a constituting document and defend a completed design brief for a named organization against alternatives. The module gathers the whole course into one working question: how received authority is cultivated, guarded, and transmitted intact across leadership transitions. You will leave with the design brief as your own instrument, built for an organization you name and ready to survive the transition it was written for. The final work of the course is the one you take with you.