CORPSE (OF., Fr. corps, body, from Lat. cor pus, body). A dead human body is not prop erty in the ordinary commercial sense of the term. In the absence of a statute authorizing it, a contract for the sale of such a body is void, as tending to outrage decency, humanity, and sound public policy; and an officer who seizes or holds the body under any legal process issued against the person while living is guilty of a criminal offense. But while a dead body is not property, it the object of certain well-defined rights. The possessor of these rights is the sur viving husband or wife, or the nearest of kin of the deceased, unless the deceased has made a valid disposition of his body by will. Accord ingly, if one mutilates a dead body, or prevents its burial, or unlawfully interferes with it after burial, he may not only be punishable criminally, but be liable in an action for damages to the husband. or wife, or next of kin, of the deceased.
Controversies between persons as to the place of burial of a dead body, or as to its proper treatment., are within the jurisdiction of a court of equity in the United States, and are not sub ject to ecclesiastical decision—as has from an early period been the case in England. This is
upon the theory that the rights in a dead body are in the nature of a sacred trust, in the proper performance of which all are interested who were allied to the deceased by family ties.
Not only is a dead human body the object of legal rights, but it is also the object of legal on the part of the living. The husband, or the wife, or the nearest of kin, or in the absence or poverty of these a stranger under whose roof a death occurs, is bound to give the body of the deceased a decent burial. Any one who casts it away without funeral rites, or in decently exposes it, is liable to criminal punish ment. On the other hand, the expenses of a proper burial have priority over every other claim against the estate of the deceased. Con suit the authorities referred to under SALE (of personal properly): 13cutAL, etc.