tailieunhanh - COURTING DEATH The Law of Mortality

I have lived all my life under erasure. Who I am, a lawyer, a writer, a friend, seems only a trace, the wake a boat leaves in passing. I try so hard to hold fast its shape, to remember, to preserve, but inevitably the passage of time does its work of deliverance and loss. Like Dorothea Lange’s cover image, ‘Gravestone, Utah’1 our memorial to ourselves and others has been windblasted smooth by time. ‘In memory of ’: yes, but of whom or what? In the confounding face of death, deliverance becomes effacement, loss becomes lack, and memory seems only to remind us that there is something we ought. | Law and Social Theory COURTING DEATH The Law of Mortality EDITED BY DESMOND MANDERSON -------- COURTING DEATH The Law of Mortality Edited by DESMOND MANDERSON Pluto P Press LONDON STERLING VIRGINIA First published 1999 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive Sterling VA 20166-2012 USA Copyright Desmond Manderson 1999 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 The Almond Tree by Jon Stallworthy reproduced by kind permission of the author. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 1366 3 hbk Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Courting death the law of mortality edited by Desmond Manderson. p. cm. Law and social theory Includes index. ISBN 0-7453-1366-3 hbk 1. Dead Legal status laws etc. 2. Death. 3. Capital punishment. 4. Euthanasia. 5. Dead bodies Law I. Manderson Desmond. II. Series 1999 340 .112 dc21 99-19593 CIP Disclaimer Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Production Services Chadlington OX7 3LN Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services Northampton Printed in the EC by TJ International .