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Semester 2

Death and the Law (LAWS10238)

Subject

Law

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 Law courses at grade B or above, including courses equivalent to Succession and Trust Law (LAWS08130) and Property Law Ordinary (LAWS08133). We will only consider University/College level courses. This course is only open to visiting students who are nominated to study with us on a Law exchange agreement. Exchange students outside of Law and study abroad students are not eligible to enrol on this course before teaching begins, with no exceptions, and spaces cannot be guaranteed to those students at any time. **Please see Additional Restrictions**

Course Summary

This is an interdisciplinary course on the relations between law and death. Students will gain an understanding of the principles, policies and values underlying the laws dealing with death, and will reflect on the impact of such principles and policies on both the dead and the living, and on matters of intergenerational equality. In exploring the relations between death and law, this course invites students to take both a functional and holistic approach. The course further takes a historical, theoretical, and comparative approach. It explores different conceptions of death and their legal consequences and examines the extent to which individuals can shape what happens after their death and influence the lives of those whom they leave behind. Students will thus study when human beings are dead for the purposes of the law but also ways in which law enables certain dimensions of the personhood of a person who is biologically dead to live on (including but not only through their digital presence). Students will further explore how far private autonomy reaches not just in determining their own afterlife (eg through decisions about posthumous procreation, organ donations, burial matters and the disposition of their estate), but also in determining the life of others (for instance through dead hand control). The course thus complements other courses, including those on the law of succession.

Course Description

This course will be taught in 10 seminars. Below is an outline of the provisional teaching programme: *Seminar 1: Introduction - Defining the boundaries between life and death; *Seminar 2: Different conceptions of death; *Seminar 3: Being biologically alive but dead for the law; *Seminar 4: Posthumous interests/rights beyond biological death?; *Seminar 5: Digital life beyond biological death; *Seminar 6: Life after death: body parts; *Seminar 7: Life after death: the body; *Seminar 8: Life after death: the estate; *Seminar 9: Dead hand control; *Seminar 10: The vulnerable dead?

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

This course cannot be taken alongside Succession and Trust Law (LAWS08130) or Property Law Ordinary (LAWS08133). **All 3rd year Law courses are ONLY open to visiting students nominated on an exchange agreement within the School of Law (including Erasmus students on a Law-specific exchange). Exchange students outside of Law, and independent study abroad students, are not eligible to enrol in these courses, with no exceptions.** Please note that 3rd year Law courses are high-demand, meaning that they have a very high number of students wishing to enrol in a very limited number of spaces. These enrolments are managed strictly by the CAHSS Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department, and all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. It is not appropriate for students to contact the Law School directly to request additional spaces. If there is sufficient space for other visiting students to enrol at the start of the semester (which cannot be guaranteed at all), visiting students must meet the pre-requisites listed above.

view the timetable and further details for this course