The Law and the Dead [Paperback]

Introduction  1. Death and Its Immediate Aftermath  2. Bodily Disposal Laws  3.Disposal of the Dead: Legal Rights and Responsibilities  4. Resolving Funeral Disputes  5. Funeral Instructions: The Case for Ante-Mortem Planning  6. Utilising Parts of the Dead: Organ Donation and Posthumous Reproduction  7. Exhuming the Dead  8. Memorialising the Dead  9.  The Law and the Dead: Time for a Re-Evaluation?

The fate of the dead is a compelling and emotive subject, which also raises increasingly complex legal questions. This book focuses on the substantive laws around disposal of the recently deceased and associated issues around their post-mortem fate. It looks primarily at the laws in England and Wales but also offers a comparative approach, drawing heavily on material from other common law jurisdictions including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

The book provides an in-depth, contextual and comparative analysis of the substantive laws and policy issues around corpse disposal, exhumation and the posthumous treatment of the dead, including commemoration. Topics covered include: the legal frameworks around burial, cremation and other disposal methods; the hierarchy of persons who have a legal duty to dispose of the dead and who are entitled to possession of the deceaseds remains; offences against the dead; family burial disputes, and the legal status of burial instructions; the posthumous use of donated bodily material; and the rules around disinterment, and creating an appropriate memorial. A key theme of the book will be to look at the manner in which conflicts involving the dead are becoming increasingly common in secular, multi-cultural societies where the traditional nuclear family model is no longer the norm, and how such legal contests are resolved by courts.