Death Rites and Rights

Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Fatemeh Ebtehaj, Jonathan Herring, Martin Johnson M.A., PhD., F.R.C.O.G., Martin Richards, Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Fatemeh Ebtehaj, Jonathan Herring, Martin Johnson M.A., PhD., F.R.C.O.G., Martin Richards

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781841137322
• eBook ISBN: 9781847313911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Medical Law
• Index: Law

Death has diverse religious, social, legal, and medical aspects and is one of the main areas in which medicine and the law intersect. In this volume, we ask: What is the meaning of death in contemporary Britain, and in other cultures, and how has it changed over time? The essays in this collection tackle the diverse ways in which death is now experienced in modern society, in the process answering a wide variety of questions: How is death defined by law? Do the dead have legal rights? What is one allowed to have and not have done to one's body after death? What are the rights of next of kin in this respect? What compensation exists for death and how is death valued? What is happening to the law on euthanasia and suicide? Is there a human right to die? What is the principle of sanctity of life? What of criminal offences against the dead? How are the traditions of death still played out in religion? How have customs and traditions of the disposal of bodies and funerals changed? What happens to donated bodies in the biomedical setting where anatomical education is permitted? What processes are employed by police when investigating suspicious deaths? What of representations of death? These and other questions are the subject of this challenging and diverse set of essays.

Table of contents

• Half title page
• Title page
• Title verso
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Death Weites
• 2 The Meaning of Death
• 3 Death, Euthanasia and the MedicalProfession
• 4 Criminalising Carers: Death Desires and Assisted Dying Outlaws
• 5 Is There a Human Right to Die?
• 6 Religious Perspectives on the Afterlife: Origin, Development and Funeral Rituals in the Christian Tradition
• 7 Purgatory: The Beginning and the End
• 8 Rites, Rights, Writing: ‘Tintern Abbey’, Death, and the Will
• 9 Death, Ritual and Material Culturein South London
• 10 Death on the Edge of the Lifeworld: the (Mis-)Appropriation of (Post-)Modern Death
• 11 ‘Hot’ Homicides and the Role of Police-Suspect Interviews in the Investigation of Illegal Deaths
• 12 Property, Harm and the Corpse
• 13 Crimes Against the Dead
• REFERENCES
• 14 Death and Tort
• APPENDIX
• REFERENCES
• 15 An Anatomist’s Perspective onthe Human Tissue Act
• 16 Anatomical Bodies and Materialsof Memory
• Index