If you defame the dead, even someone who recently died, tort law does not think that’s an injury: not to the grieving survivors and not to the dead person. This book argues that defamation is an injury to the recently dead. It explores history, including the shaping of the common law, and offers an account of posthumous harm and wrong. Along the way, it offers a sustained exploration of how we and the law think about corpse desecration.
Keywords: defamation, tort, posthumous harm, corpse desecration
Print publication date: 2017 | Print ISBN-13: 9780300221541 |
Published to Yale Scholarship Online: September 2017 | DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300221541.001.0001 |