1st Edition

The Routledge Handbook of Law and Death

Edited By Marc Trabsky, Imogen Jones Copyright 2025
366 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

366 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

366 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The Routledge Handbook of Law and Death provides a comprehensive survey of contemporary scholarship on the intersections of law and death in the 21st century. It showcases how socio-legal scholars have contributed to the critical turn in death studies and how the sociology of death has impacted upon the discipline of law. In bringing together prominent academics and emerging experts from a... Read more

Law and Death: Mapping the Terrain 

Marc Trabsky and Imogen Jones 

Part 1: Epistemologies of Death 

1. Cryptic Comments 

Desmond Manderson 

2. Beyond Denial: A Sociological Investigation of the Normative Order of Death 

Zohreh BayatRizi 

3. Another Law of the Dead? Legal Personhood, Death and Time in Anglo-Saxon Jurisprudence 

James Martel 

4. Deaths in the Mud: Law and Grievable Lives in Minas Gerais 

Maria Fernanda Salcedo Repolês and Edward Kirton-Darling 

5. Colonial Law as Nomocide 

Maria Giannacopoulos 

6. Thanatopolitics of Law 

Marc Trabsky 

Part 2: Materialities of Death 

7. Humic Lawscapes 

Joshua DM Shaw 

8. The Grave as a Contested Space 

Kate Falconer 

9. The Role and Repercussions of Law in Contested Funerals and Contested Memorials 

Heather Conway 

10. Caring for the Dead: The Role of Anatomical Pathology Technologists in Medico-legal Autopsies 

Imogen Jones 

11. Sublime Executions and Material Affections: Law, Aesthetics, and the Death Penalty 

Sabrina Gilani 

Part 3: Contested Deaths 

12. Coronial Investigations: Past Deaths and Future Lives 

Jessica Jacobson, Alexandra Murray, Hannah Rumble and Lorna Templeton 

13. Feedback Loops, Vulnerable Populations and the Coronial Determination of Suicide 

Belinda Carpenter, Ella Tait and Claire Ferguson 

14. Account-giving and the Justification of Racial Violence in Inquests of Black People Killed by Police 

Carson Cole Arthur

15. Contested Death and the Coronial Jurisdiction 

Rebecca Scott Bray 

16. Contested Deaths and the Public Inquiry in Healthcare: Where the Norm Becomes the Exception 

Hamish Robertson, David J Carter and Joanne Travaglia 

17. The Right to Life and Learning Lessons from Death 

Stuart Wallace 

Part 4: Posthumous Harms 

18. Ambivalent Parallels in Registration and Certification of (Live) Birth, Stillbirth and Miscarriage 

Karolina Kuberska and Sheelagh McGuinness 

19. Posthumous Photographic Images 

Remigius N Nwabueze 

20. When Birth and Death Collide: Maternal Infanticide and the Illusive Born Alive Rule 

Emma Milne 

21. Corporate Homicide 

Penny Crofts and Honni van Rijswijk 

22. Killing as an Operation of the Civil Law: Two Examples of Roman Jurisprudence 

Edward Mussawir 

23. Death and the Challenges of Distant Affectivity: Liminal Narratives at the International Criminal Court 

Caroline Fournet and Adina-Loredana Nistor

Biography

Marc Trabsky is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University, Australia.

Imogen Jones is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.