Book Description

Cemetery Law: The Common Law of Burying Grounds in the United States is the first treatise on U.S. cemetery law since 1950. This volume analyzes and explains key sources of U.S. cemetery law, including treatises, reports, and decisions by appellate courts. The "traditional" American burial-embalming, encasement in a casket, and use of a vault or grave liner in a single, perpetual grave-is still the prevailing practice in the United States. However, Baby Boomers concerned about the cost and environmental consequences of this model are sparking the first significant changes in American disposition practices since the Civil War. Practices that minimize consumption and cost-including "green" burial and cremation-have exploded in popularity in the past decade. Nearly half of all deaths in the United States now result in cremation, and that method of disposition is anticipated to overtake burial in the next few years. Americans eager to innovate in the disposition of human remains find that the law-still heavily rooted in seventeenth century English, Protestant assumptions, practices, and beliefs-is ill-equipped to adapt. Cemetery law in the United States has changed little in the past 200 years, but changes in our disposition practices are so widespread and significant that it will soon have no choice. It is unimaginable that we will start with a clean slate. Instead, the law will, as it always does in a common law system, slowly evolve from its current form. This book is therefore designed to help begin that process by illuminating the structure and history of the common law of burying grounds in the United States, including the foundational assumptions, beliefs, and doctrines.