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This book explores the funerary culture in the Netherlands through a mixture of photographs, figures and case studies. The nine chapters demonstrate the process of funeralising and ideas about death in the Netherlands, providing an overview of contemporary funerary practices and their changes over time.

Exploring the traditions, customs and contemporary legal framework of Czech funerary practices, this book analyses and interprets the high cremation rate, predominance of secular funerals and increasing popularity of cremation with no funeral ceremony against the background of the country's historical development.

This Article argues that American law treats dead bodies as quasi-persons: entities with a moral status between things and persons. The concept of quasi-personhood builds on dead bodies' familiar classification as quasi-property. 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.

The story of Jesus’ burial in Mark 15 presents Jewish funeral traditions that show Jesus’ connection to Judaism. This study looks closely at the burial process in Mark, focusing on what happens when Joseph of Arimathea asks for Jesus’ body and makes it ready for burial and where it is placed before the Sabbath starts. It puts these practices into the context of Jewish funeral rituals when Jesus lived. Furthermore, by contextualising these burial customs, this research proposes that Mark uses these rituals to underline Jesus’ conformity to Jewish identity and present a theological continuity between Jesus and the Jewish faith, despite the Gospel’s eventual message to a broader audience. In exploring how these burial practices function as cultural identity markers, this article contributes to scholarship on the Jewishness of Jesus, arguing that Mark’s burial account reinforces a communal and cultural bond that defines Jesus’ identity within his Jewish heritage.ContributionThis article underlines the importance of Jewish funerary customs in Mark 15:42–47 as identity markers affirming Jesus’ Jewishness. By analysing burial practices such as body preparation and timing, it contextualises Jesus’ burial within Second Temple Judaism, demonstrating his alignment with Jewish traditions. This study offers a nuanced perception of how Mark integrates cultural practices to portray theological continuity between Jesus and Judaism while addressing a broader audience.

An unfortunate reality of the human experience is that everyone will die one day--and while you may have led a sustainable and eco-friendly life while living, how can you continue that trend through death? This Note seeks to point out the necessity of adapting our current deathcare practices in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing concerns for degrading air quality and consequences of rapid climate change. Beginning in Section I, this Note provides context of the rising death rates during the pandemic and explores the history of deathcare practices in the United States. Through an in-depth overview of current deathcare practices, this Note addresses the increasing popularity of choosing cremation and the environmental concerns that accompany it. Turning to a discussion focused on the specific, environmentally harmful effects our deathcare practices have had, and continue to have, Section II provides concrete examples of the consequences traditional burial and cremation pose, such as toxic runoff, wastewater infiltration, and air pollution, which could easily be more heavily regulated within the industry. Section III then provides a brief definition of what dying green means and a quick example of what it might look like before diving into Section IV, which summarizes the various laws that govern cemeteries, crematoriums, and deathcare land space. By discussing the relevant zoning and land use laws that regulate our deathcare practices, which are largely controlled by local ordinances and state cemetery codes, this Section highlights how consistent federal guidance in the deathcare industry could quell environmental consequences of traditional deathcare practices. Finally, Section V explores a handful of practical solutions that could be implemented to encourage dying green and how local governments can help make these greener options more accessible by way of permits, park fees, tax credits, mixeduse spaces, and the legalization of innovative, new options like aquamation and human composting. This Note then concludes that, through these solutions, local governments can help address current, environmentally harmful deathcare practices that are contributing to air quality degradation and climate change by issuing a call for action to state and local legislatures.

The ability to acquire the landownership rights of another through adverse possession is a fundamental part of American property law. Yet to laypeople, the adverse possessor often seems hardly more than a thief. In contrast, scholars have justified the doctrine on a number of grounds: as punishment against original landowners who fail consistently to fly flags of ownership and protect their rights; as a reward to the adverse possessor, who presumably is making a higher and better use of the land than did its original owner; and as an acknowledgement that the adverse possessors uninterrupted and continuous use over timecombined with a claim of ownershipleads to a psychological or emotional attachment held by the adverse possessor that far exceeds any such attachment held by the original owner. While each of these justifications has merit when applied to realty that is freely alienable and whose use may change over time, the justifications are less convincing when applied to certain kinds of realty. Real property interests exist in which we do not reasonably expect the holder to engage in routine inspection against trespass; in which there will be no higher and better use over the course of time; and in which the psychological and emotional attachments of an interloper are less, or no greater, than those of the original owner. In these instances, the trespasser who knowingly claims title through adverse possession indeed seems much like a thief. In such instances, should traditional property rules apply? What role do equitable considerations have to play? This Article examines these questions in a specific but illuminating instance: disputes among competing claimants to gravesites. Examining the unique attributes of burial lots in American property law, the Article demonstrates why traditional property rules are often an inappropriate mechanism for settling such disputes. The Article does not suggest a complete abandonment of adverse possession and traditional remedies for resolving disputes over burial sites. Instead, the Article argues for a more nuanced application of legal and equitable principles and invites further discussion of traditional property rules as currently applied to other forms of property that are not just unusual, but instead truly unique.

In this essay, Rabbi Professor Neria Guttel, head of an IDF Rabbinate Special Investigation Unit for casualty identification, analyzes some of the halakhic considerations involved in identifying the victims of Hamas' barbaric massacre on Simhat Torah 5784. In particular, he evaluates the case of a victim, \"Reuven\", whose home was burnt to ashes. His wife's remains were identified though DNA testing, but no trace of \"Reuven\" was found. After extensive efforts, small bone fragments were located in the house, including a skull bone. A medical committee determined that the person to whom the bone belonged is no longer alive. However, due to the fire's intensity, it was not possible to extract DNA from any of the remains. Nevertheless, significant data indicated both the deceased's presence in the house during the terrorist raid and that he did not leave. Based on these data points and others, the medical and intelligence professionals who investigated the case concluded that \"Reuven\" was killed on Simhat Torah. The question discussed in the article is whether it can be halachically determined, based on the description and professional findings, that \"Reuven\" is notamong the living, with the practical halakhic implications this entails. The article presents a detailed analysis of the halakhic considerations that made it possible to determine that \"Reuven\" is not among the living. The main considerations were based on proof that no person left the house (neither kidnapped nor fled); a \"mesi'ah lefi tumo\" (unprompted testimony) which explicitly stated \"two\" people were killed; the determination that only two people were in the house-\"Reuven\" and his wife; the identification of hiswife in a location distant from the additional remains, Which were found behind two, standing walls. The match of a dental crown and two teeth to \"Reuven\" further reinforced and supported this conclusion, as did the collection of bones found, one of which a person cannot live without.

In recent years, American institutions have inadvertently encountered the bodies of former slaves with increasing frequency. Pledges of respect are common features of these discoveries, accompanied by cultural debates about what \"respect\" means. Often embedded in these debates is an intuition that there is something special about respecting the dead bodies, burial sites, and images of victims of mass, systemic horrors. This Article employs legal doctrine, philosophical insights, and American history to both interrogate and anchor this intuition. Law can inform these debates because we regularly turn to legal settings to resolve disputes about the dead. Yet the passage of time, systemic dehumanization, and changing egalitarian norms all complicate efforts to apply traditional legal considerations to disputes about victims of subordination. While, for example, courts usually consult decedents' expressed intentions to resolve disputes, how do we divine the wishes of people who died centuries ago, under a legal system designed to negate and dishonor their intentions? How do we honor relationships like kinship for people who were routinely and forcibly separated from their kin? And how do we assess the motives or culpability of institutions that, in prior generations, were complicit in profound horrors, but now pledge honor and respect? This Article offers a theory of time and equality to help guide cultural and legal debates about the treatment of dead victims of mass horror. On this account, we can become complicit in past, systemic subordination by dishonoring the memories of victims. Systemic neglect and exploitation of a group's bodies and images can diminish the role of that group in shaping our national memory. And if it is wrong to deny a person the ability to leave a legacy on account of race under contemporary egalitarian norms, then we ought not engage in posthumous acts against the enslaved and other systemically debased persons that perpetually rob them of such a legacy.

This article addresses a lacuna in scholarship: the burial and mourning rites for premodern Jewish children's deaths. I explore three genres of sources from western and central Europe: bylaws, custom books, and epitaphs. I argue that communal leaders regulated the process of grieving one's children, marking those deaths in ways that are different from how an adult is memorialized. Nevertheless, by creating additional rites or by permitting parents to circumvent certain norms, communal leaders acknowledged and even facilitated more intense expressions of parental loss.