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This Article argues that American law treats dead bodies as quasipersons: entities with a moral status between things and persons. The concept of quasi-personhood builds on dead bodies' familiar classification as quasiproperty. Just as quasi-property implicates only a subset of the rights usually associated with property, quasi-personhood implicates only a subset of the moral interests often associated with moral personhood. Drawing on a broad historical analysis of state, territory, and federal law, I show that U.S. law conceives of dead bodies as holders of dignity interests, which it protects in a variety of ways. The law, for example, protects dead bodies against denigration to the status of property, waste, or nonhuman animals and ensures that dead bodies be treated as individuals with names. The law also protects dead bodies against visual, physical, and sexual abuse. I analyze how these dignity protections operate across disparate areas of law, including criminal statutes, tort law, licensing regimes, and zoning ordinances. Using unclaimed bodies as a case study, I then argue that my account of dead bodies as quasi-persons casts a critical light on the mistreatment that some dead bodies--especially those of Black Americans, Native Americans, and the poor--regularly suffer. The account also illuminates the law's implicit views of personhood, property, human nature, and mortality. And it points the way for future research on the law's treatment of other arguably liminal entities, such as animals, fetuses, plants, and AI models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living in a challenging era when people are being deprived of the rights to their bodies that they have won through centuries of vehement struggle for liberty. This unfortunate truth is valid not only with regard to rights to the body while alive, but also concerning the right to dispose of one's body in the event of death, and the root of this is the failure of the legal system to reflect prevailing social values. This Article will analyze the various options for selecting persons authorized to dispose of a corpse through the prism of the social sciences. It will scrutinize the basics underlying the state's choice in favor of either the deceased's relatives or non-blood loved ones and demonstrate the depth of the disregard for the deceased's will in determining the posthumous destiny of their own body. Ultimately, this Article will propose a model for a radical revision of a person's right to dispose of their own dead body, the heart of which will be the concept of the abstract subject of ownership. This new concept will, for the first time, justify a logically consistent mechanism explaining how a person's right to their body is capable of surviving the death of its owner and continuing to operate despite the absence of a concrete owner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the dawn of time, the life of humankind has marched hand in hand with death and its core manifestation that heralds its presence on Earth--the human corpses. Although death is a natural and inevitable companion of our lives, the law has thus far devoted scant interest to the integration of the cadaver into the established systematics of objects and subjects of rights and to the fundamental theoretical justification of such integration, the corollary of which is that dead bodies stand in a gray zone and in an ontological legal vacuum. The purpose of this Article is to clarify the legal regime of the corpse. The present Article will examine the prospects of recognizing a corpse as a person and the feasibility of characterizing it as an interestholder, demonstrating the logical fallibility of this construct and its salient riskiness for the whole concept of human personality. It will also reveal that other theories attempting to surmount the frailties of the corpse-as-aperson doctrine by conferring an intermediate status between person and property on the cadaver, not only fail to minimize the number of insoluble conceptual quandaries, but also inherit the shortcomings of the two previous dogmatic approaches, and therefore cannot offer a viable alternative to these views. Accordingly, this Article will advance the legal and supra-legal rationale for ownership of a deceased body. In the meantime, utilizing the example of the landmark case of WTC Families for a Proper Burial, Inc. v. City of New York, it will be shown that the traditional Anglo-Saxon view of ownership, stemming from archaic and erroneous ideas of Ancient Rome, is impotent to ensure proper regulation of rights to corpse and may inflict considerable distress on the relatives of deceased persons. As an alternative to the prevailing doctrinal opinion, the authors will employ the theory of abstract ownership, which is free from the flaws typical of the traditional concept of ownership and represents a better system of rights over the corpse, in which interests of the deceased's relatives will enjoy adequate legal redress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, given the considerable growth in medical and other scientific technologies that enable the utilization of human body parts, the need for human biomaterials, of which the corpse may be one of the primary potential sources, is fairly acute. This Article presents a reconsideration of the legal status of, and rights to, the dead body. It describes, from a comparative perspective, the evolution of legal thought from a total failure to recognize property rights in the cadaver to the gradual incorporation of the corpse into the discourse of property law. It critically scrutinizes all the drawbacks of the so-called no-property rule and competitive advantages that the granting of property rights in the dead body can yield. It further substantiates the concept of abstract ownership in a cadaver, bringing about a logically consistent single lifetime and posthumous ownership right with which an individual may mobilize economic potential of his or her body while alive and dispose of his or her corpse posthumously. Finally, the Article will thoroughly analyze the ways of acquiring property rights in the dead body, demonstrating how abstract ownership may harmonize them and eradicate their inconsistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The main objectives of this paper are to define the issues related to a search for a drowned corpse, fishing it out and procedures to take evidence when the victim's body has not been found. Methods A case analysis was performed in which the criminal covered up traces by drowning the corpse. An extensive study in this regard was conducted covering 500 criminal cases concluded with a final and binding judgement. Finding a corpse in a lake 24 years after the crime is a case described in detail in this paper. The authors obtained the consent of the District Prosecutor and the District Court in Olsztyn for publishing the case materials. Results Neither the process of the corpse search nor fishing it out were carried out properly in the case under study. The large number of search attempts was caused by poor coordination of the search groups and by using unsuitable tools. Most methods were ineffective given the small size of the package resting on the water reservoir bed. Conclusions A search for a drowned corpse requires good cooperation between the search team and law enforcement authorities and later with forensic medicine specialists in establishing the cause of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the work completed during a research placement at the Library of Congress studying manuscripts held within the Black History Collection, the paper explores how studying the financial mechanics of the slave trade – from insurance to speculation, asset stripping to securities – reveal a horrific turning point in the history of slavery in which the black body became more valuable dead than alive. Not only did this turning point work to 'legitimize' the murder of African Americans, it also demonstrates how both physical and financial racial violence during the domestic slave trade has a direct relationship to the deregulation of the slave market and the subsequent corpse‐valuation of the slave body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the U.S. commerce in human cadavers for medical education and research to explore variation in legitimacy in trades involving similar goods. It draws on archival, interview, and observational data mainly from New York State to analyze market participants’ efforts to legitimize commerce and resolve a jurisdictional dispute. Building on literature on professions, the study shows that how goods are traded, not only what is traded, proves integral to constructing legitimacy, thus suggesting a practice-based view of moral markets. The professionals, including a group of “gatekeepers,” construct a narrative distinction between their own commerce and an implicitly less moral alternative and geographically insulate their trades from the broader commerce, creating in effect two circuits. Yet the professionals also promote specific practices of trade within their circuit to help them distinguish their own pursuit from an alternative course of action. The study’s findings shed light on the micro-foundations of market legitimization and on the role of morals in sustaining professional jurisdictions.

What have affirmative action policies, categorization of care needs, plastic surgery, forensic identification of dead bodies and age assessments of refugees in common? They all determine recognition and access to resources and rights via the body. In the introduction to this special issue, the editors emphasize that the body only becomes distinct and significant when it is put in relation to historically and geographically differing norms and standards. This relational approach opens up the 'black boxes' of science, medicine, bureaucracy and eventually the body. Drawing on practice theory, critical citizenship studies and Science and Technology Studies, the authors discuss notions of social citizenship and the conceptualization of biological citizenship in medical anthropology. They think with the contributions of the special issue that analyse how medical practitioners, state and private institutions, as well as individuals enact certain bodies in specific material and discursive constellations. By taking neither citizenship nor the body for granted, the special issue shows how situationally-bound elements in relations, space and time, matter for a person's access to rights and resources – and hence can draw attention to blind spots in particular categorization practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strange feature of Anglo-American law is that human dead bodies do not legally belong to anyone, except insofar as a timelimited "quasi-property" right permits descendants to bury the body of a deceased relative. But dead bodies are not alone in the realm of no-property. There are other matters, too, that are also un-ownable in principle, particularly those relating to intellectual efforts. Some of these efforts and achievements cannot become intellectual property (IP) at all, and others lose property status after the expiration of their IP terms; I refer to all these as NIPs (for "non-IP"). Unlike intellectual matters, which do not deteriorate with use, corpses are finite objects, and finite objects are generally subject to overuse if left in open access. One might think that human remains are unlikely to suffer overuse, not only because of their disturbing character, but also because any value they have is limited to a small number of persons, especially descendants. But in fact, for several centuries, third parties have found increasing use value in human remains, first for anatomy lessons and, more recently for medical transplantation and research. How is the lack of property explained in the case of dead bodies on one hand and NIPs on the other? Is there any relationship between what seem to be very different kinds of subject matter? This Article examines a set of standard reasons why some things cannot be owned and argues that despite some differences, there are also unexpected parallels between NIPs and corpses with respect to their no-property status. A standard theory of property argues that property rights evolve in things as those things become increasingly valuable. While the law halts formal property both for corpses and for NIPs, both have great value for some parties. Thus, perhaps more disturbingly, there are also parallels between the ways that interested parties attempt to evade the no-property status of corpses on the one hand and NIPs on the other. While propertization is not the only answer to these evasions, it may be that corpses are becoming more propertized, while IP is becoming less so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which demonstrated that the Qing legal system readily endorsed judicial rituals of the underworld and geomantic interpretations of land to resolve county-level disputes, with the dead being recognized by courts as having distinct interests and the capacity to aid and harm their living relations.

Background: Accurate stature estimation plays an essential role in the identification of unknown deceased individuals. For cases in which conventional methods of stature estimation are not applicable, we studied the stature estimation potential of the fourth lumbar vertebra (L4) among a large living sample of representative contemporary Finns. We also generated stature estimation equations for the middle-aged Finnish population.Material and Methods: Our study population comprised the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 for which lumbar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and objective measurements of stature were available from midlife (n=1358). After screening the MRI scans for vertebral pathologies, we measured the maximum and minimum widths, depths and heights of the L4 body with high precision and reliability. We then calculated their sums and means together with approximations of vertebral cross-sectional area and volume. By constructing simple and multiple linear regression models around the L4 parameters, we generated equations for stature prediction, and investigated their accuracy on the basis of the adjusted R squared (R2) and standard error of the estimate (SEE) values of the models.Results: The multiple linear regression models of the mean width, depth and height of L4 yielded the highest prediction accuracies with the lowest prediction errors (for the entire sample, R2=0.621 and SEE=5.635cm; for men, R2=0.306 and SEE=5.125cm; for women, R2=0.367 and SEE=4.640cm).Conclusion: When conventional methods for estimating stature are not applicable, the lumbar vertebrae may be utilized for this purpose. Relatively accurate stature estimates can be given on the basis of only L4 dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violation of sepulchres is a common law crime in Scotland. This crime ensures that interred human corpses are not subject to the ordinary laws of property, but are instead protected under this distinct heading of law. While it now appears settled that a corpse can be stolen prior to interment, it remains unclear if a corpse which was once buried, but has since been lawfully removed from its grave, remains incapable of being stolen, or if it becomes susceptible to theft again when exhumed. This article suggests that the latter occurs in Scots law since a res religiosa – an object not subject to the ordinary rules of property – is created when the body is placed in its grave. This suggestion draws on the connection between the contemporary crime of violation of sepulchres and its Roman ancestor, the crimen violati sepulcri. The article suggests that though the overtly religious overtones of the term ‘res religiosa’ appears to be at odds with an increasingly secularised society, the law surrounding res religiosae functionally explains the absence of ‘property’ in buried bodies, thus providing a logical basis for the proposition that an unburied body may be stolen, but a buried body may not be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to abortion opponents in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, but the 2016 ruling did not dampen their resolve. Just days after Texas lost the Hellerstedt battle, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) returned to the fight and proposed regulations requiring health care facilities to inter or cremate the remains of aborted and miscarried fetuses. Undeterred by a preliminary injunction entered against those regulations once they became final, the Texas legislature enacted a law with similar effect in June 2017. The Texas law, however, proved to be good ground for yet another victory for those who advocate choice. Having already found the DSHS regulations wanting, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas enjoined the new statute, concluding that it was unlikely to survive the undue burden test that the Supreme Court set out in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has now followed suit with respect to an Indiana law regulating the disposition of fetal remains. But rather than applying Casey's undue burden test, the appeals court determined that the Indiana statute could not survive even the very deferential rational basis standard of review. Importantly, the decisions of both the Texas district court and the Seventh Circuit conflict with a 1990 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to uphold a Minnesota fetal remains disposition law--in a case tried before Roe v. Wade's demanding trimester framework gave way to Casey's more lenient undue burden standard. Thus, three federal courts are now in conflict, and the Supreme Court may need to step in yet again to decide who is right. Unfortunately, Hellerstedt provides no easy answer to the question of whether fetal remains disposition requirements like those enacted in Texas and Indiana can survive constitutional challenge. The Texas legislation at issue in Hellerstedt purportedly advanced the state's interest in safeguarding maternal health, and thus one questions how the Hellerstedt Court's interpretation of Casey's undue burden standard will apply to abortion regulations that are founded on the state's interest in protecting potential life. What is certain, though, is that the Hellerstedt Court did not overrule its decision either in Casey or in Gonzales v. Carhart, both of which upheld measures aimed at encouraging a woman to choose childbirth over abortion. This Article thus contends that, when viewed in light of Casey and Gonzales, Hellerstedf s interpretation of the undue burden test leaves states with a great deal of latitude to regulate abortion in a manner aimed at protecting potential life. As a result, efforts to regulate the method of disposing of fetal remains should pass constitutional muster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I unpack the “potter's field” as an everyday practice and a category, especially as it operates in the material treatment of bodies as a mirror of life. I examine this space of “worthlessness” as it exists in liberal capitalism. From the potter's fields of São Paulo, Brazil, I consider how these are, in fact, mundane mass graves, made politically useful as a means to obscure important bodies alongside those who are, today, the subjects of terror. I then ask how the rise of the uncertified potter's field—a burial field for disposable bodies, not made legal by the state—is inseparable from recent historical and contemporary conditions of political abandonment. The uncertified field is made easy by a politics of abandonment, and becomes useful to state institutions as a material invocation of responsibility, interred elsewhere, while nonetheless advancing a larger logic of governance and political will in our times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two ways to transfer a bodily right. One might transfer a bodily right in a detaching way – that is, without transferring jurisdiction over one’s future bodily choices. Alternately, one might transfer a bodily right in an attaching way – that is, in a way that transfers such jurisdiction. For instance, A might sell his kidney to B for money paid at the time of the transplant. Alternately, A might accept money now, agreeing to give up his kidney some time down the road. In the latter case and not the former, B acquires normative jurisdiction over A’s future bodily choices. In this paper I will argue that the distinction between attaching and detaching transfers of bodily rights has implications regarding whether certain contracts and agreements should be legally enforced – and whether problems arise when the moral and legal transferability of these rights comes apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In armed conflicts, death is not an exceptional occurrence, but becomes the rule and occurs on a daily basis. Dead bodies are sometimes despoiled, mutilated, abandoned without any funeral rite and without a decent burial. Unidentified remains may be counted by hundreds or thousands. As a result, families look for years for missing relatives, ignorant of the fate of their loved ones. International Humanitarian Law, also called the laws of war or the law of armed conflict, is an international law branch, which has been developed to regulate and, as far as possible, to humanize armed conflicts. It contains a number of clear and concrete obligations incumbent to belligerent parties on the management of dead bodies, which provide the legal framework for humanitarian forensic action. The purpose of this article is to present, in a simple and concise manner, these rules with a view to extrapolate some key legal principles, such as the obligation to respect the dignity of the dead or the right to know the fate of relatives, which shall guide anyone dealing with human remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the authors' views about whether politicians or trained professionals are better equipped to run death examination offices in America, and it mentions the differences between appointed and elected judges in the U.S., as well as information about the investigative roles of death examiners. Decisions regarding autopsies and evaluations of dead bodies are examined, along with America's National Association of Medical Examiners and board-certified pathologists.

The article looks at Chapter 467 of California Code of Civil Procedure which proposes three changes to civil procedure. It mentions that proposed changes focuses on procedural aspects of expert witness file discovery and making postmortem images more easily accessible for deceased individuals' family members. It mentions that rules regarding discovery of expert witness files are enacted through California Civil Discovery Act of 1986.

Punjab Anatomy Act was enacted in 1963 to supply unclaimed dead bodies to medical colleges for teaching anatomical/surgical dissection. However most of such bodies are rendered useless because of Autopsy. Skeleton can be extracted from such autopsied bodies. Voluntary body donation is not illegal but not mentioned in the Act. Principals of Three Government Medical colleges are the only authorised officer. Act is silent over transfer of bodies from one medical institute to another. Same Hospital Ambulance is used to transport cadavers as well as living patients. So to clarify these issues Punjab Anatomy Act needs urgent amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the politics of images of the dead body. Western cultural norms often dictate that dead bodies should not be viewable outside of the funerary industry, especially when they are graphic by virtue of a bloody and violent death. These cultural taboos tell us that dead bodies do not belong in the public sphere, and something extraordinary must be the case for them to be on display and rendered visible. However, rather than focus on the taboo itself that structures these regimes of visuality, this paper focuses on the political work these taboos do to enact particular performances of rehumanization and dehumanization of the dead. It traces the paradox of the ambivalent effects of dead bodies when they are rendered visible in global politics in two main ways: one, humanizing, to advocate for attention to a particular crisis-of-humanity, and two, to dehumanize particular dead bodies in the service of a narrative that depicts enemy bodies as killable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is a reply to: Auchter, Jessica. 2017. “On viewing: the politics of looking at the corpse.”Global Discourse. 7 (2–3): 223–238.https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1314908. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article describes how the nature and the value of the relationship of the living to the dead is an aspect of human life that people seem to have neglected. The sense of being rooted in a meaningful world depends not just upon an isolated self and its projects but upon relations with particular others, and some experiences of grief at the absence of those with whom one's relationship was meaningful.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine residents’ perception on the polluting effects of the disposal of the dead in Ile-Ife, a traditional African city. This came about based on the recognition of the disposal of corpses and carcasses as sources of environmental pollution in the built environment. The perception study becomes imperative since introduction of perception is adjudged a tool for proffering solution to different problems in the different human endeavours and a method of getting policy information from the people that will be eventual subjects of the policy.Design/methodology/approach The study used household survey through questionnaire administration. The city of Ile-Ife was stratified into residential zones comprising the traditional zone, the transition zone and the peripheral zone. Across the zones, a total of 306 residents were systematically sampled on which the designed questionnaires were administered.Findings Dumping was the commonest method of the disposal of carcasses and burial was the commonest for corpses. The practices of the disposal of dead in the city were without consideration for its polluting effect and public health concern.Research limitations/implications The study is capable of generating hypotheses for future research in the area of environmental studies, especially in the global south.Practical implications The findings and recommendations of this study can provide information on future policy making, review and implementation on the disposal of the dead and other related issues in environmental studies both in the city and others with similar setting.Originality/value This paper is based on primary data from a survey of residents of Ile-Ife, Nigeria in March 2015. Its value lies in its capacity to suggest policy response for enhanced liveable environment through a study on residents’ perception, a bottom-up approach to policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human remains constitute an important category of cultural heritage, but do not easily fit into the legal frameworks that are used to protect other forms of cultural heritage or cultural property. While much of the law surrounding cultural heritage and cultural property focuses on built heritage, such as sites and monuments, artefacts and artwork, or the intangible heritage associated with living and recent cultures, law related to historic and ancient human remains is convoluted, geographically-restricted, and difficult to enforce. Further, current law seldom considers the human dignity of the individual deceased - particularly for human remains that lack specific cultural affiliation or that fall outside of particular narrow categories (such as 'indigenous'). One source of difficulty is that it is not always c ear what should be treated as human remains for legal purposes. For example, while a natural mummy clearly constitutes human remains, this is less clear in the case of objects such as skull drums or cups, jewellery or other objects made of human bones or teeth. Classification of a specimen as an 'artefact' or as 'human remains' can determine the protections that are available under both national and international law. For human remains that can be classified as 'artefacts', current cultura heritage and cultural property regimes provide a degree of protection against, e.g., trafficking, but potentially at the cost of the human dignity of the deceased. For human remains that can be classified only as 'human remains', there may be little or no legal protection. This paper explores the complexity of categorising archaeological human remains for legal purposes, and identifies some of the issues related to the identification of laws that protect archaeological human remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay responds to current scholarship as it explains the poor person's horror of dissection in the Victorian period as part of a long and complex process of deprivation. Working with the Anatomy Act (1832) and the New Poor Law (1834) as its backdrop, this essay examines three anxieties that were inseparable from the pauper's existence: the social embarrassment attendant on the loss of personal belongings, especially clothes; the humiliation forced upon workhouse inmates by the New Poor Law diet; and the existential foreboding triggered by the prospect of postmortem dissection. It culminates in a consideration of the early works of Charles Dickens, who found in fiction a set of strategies that allowed early Victorians simultaneously to register and to compensate for these anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]