Throughout history, the subject of death and dying has been a pivotal part of the law. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the outcomes of differing policies surrounding death throughout history, in different cultures, and how they compare to policies today.
We will discuss legal ramifications of the determination of whether human remains are considered personal property. In some cultures, the taking of buried bodies not only wasn't considered theft, but the bodies were used to advance medical research. Now, many cultures allow people to decide what they'd like to happen to their bodies after they've been determined to be legally dead.
Further, we will discuss legal differences of the determination of the time of death. Currently, the legal definition requires the irreversible cessation of all brain function or irreversible cessation of cardio-respiratory function. This conversation has morphed over time and adapts with the advancement of medicine.
Finally, we will discuss how trust and estates law can be a powerful tool to navigate end of life care. Estate planning is advertised to talk about what happens with worldly assets. Here, we'll discuss how the law has played a part in what happens to physical bodies as the body is declared legally dead.

Going back at least to the Epicureans, many philosophers in the Western tradition have argued that it is ill-fitting to fear death. These philosophers have all conceptualised death as the extinction of the subject. In this paper, I move away from the assumption that we know what death is, and I explore whether -- and if so how -- it might be fitting to fear death if death is conceptualised as something unknown. I distinguish between the case of a "stereotypical believer" who thinks of death as a risky event, and the case of an agnostic who thinks of death as deeply ambiguous. I argue that in both cases, something akin to fear, though not paradigmatic fear, is warranted. I also argue that questions pertaining to the fittingness of fearing what is uncertain might not be fully separable from questions about what it is useful for us to fear, and that the epistemic and prudential rationality of fearing what is uncertain are thus intertwined.

The modern-day controversy surrounding the declaration of death by neurologic criteria or brain death is steeped in a long history of controversies over the science of declaring one dead. The science supporting pronouncement of death has evolved over centuries, while the concept of brain death comparatively is new and not universally accepted. The science supporting this concept remains in its infancy. Medically, the clinical pronouncement of death has been well accepted for decades and codified in laws around the globe. However, advancements in transplant medicine and technology, particularly big data science and artificial intelligence, raise new questions surrounding the scientific definition of death, beginning a new era to this fascinating history.