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"The Law and the Dead: Something Old, Something New"

The fate of the recently dead is a compelling and emotive subject that also raises a host of legal issues. This lecture explores two contemporary themes. Part 1 looks at two new and technologically innovative funeral methods (alkaline hydrolysis and natural organic reduction) that are changing the funeral landscape, as part of a twin narrative of greater consumer choice and- more importantly- ‘dying greener’. It identifies the challenges in crafting a new legislative landscape, and questions what role law can actually play in mainstreaming these new funerary methods.

Both the advent of these new technologies and the physical residue that they leave behind are another potential source of conflict within the deceased’s family (however defined). Part 2 of the lecture looks at the more familiar area of family funeral disputes, and the particular challenges that these present for courts when a legal solution has to be found. Identifying ashes as a new(er) variation on this theme and increasing source of (secondary) conflict within families, it questions whether old, established property law rules can provide a definitive answer to the question of who ‘owns’ ashes.