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Full-Text Articles in Human Rights Law
Dead Bodies As Quasi-Persons, Ela A. Leshem Associate Professor
Dead Bodies As Quasi-Persons, Ela A. Leshem Associate Professor
Vanderbilt Law Review
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 …
Torts And Personhood, Melissa Mortazavi
Torts And Personhood, Melissa Mortazavi
Arkansas Law Review
Perhaps more so than ever, legal personhood is contested. Part I of this Article lays out an overview of existing tort theories exposing the limitations of existing paradigms. This positions the reader to consider in Part II the core assertion of this paper: that a fundamental role of torts is to define personhood. As such, it explores the idea that a principal project that each tort case and litigant is engaged with is not truly about money, property, or even pain per se—it is about determining who is seen.