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Where Law Meets Culture: The Legal Protection Of The Dead In China, Bing Shui

Bing Shui

Can people be harmed after they are gone? If so, by what means can we protect their posthumous interests? Do the dead have legal rights? Those sequential questions are not only philosophical puzzles, but also a gridlock to law-makers and judges in most jurisdictions. Following the old notion that “the dead do not hear”, law is historically set up to deal with people from the cradle to the grave. Once a human being has become a corpse, it may be viewed as something like “a piece of furniture” yet the body is more than an instrumental thing; it is a …