Inspired by this article, would such a thing be legal today, even with the immediate party’s consent? Is there such a thing as voluntary abuse of a corpse so to speak or would it be automatically considered against public policy? Sure there is Dr. Gunther von Hagen’s collection, but using human skin for a binding seems to me to fall in a different category. What’s the straight dope? Depends on the country?
as with any legal question, the answer will depend on the local laws, so I doubt that you can get a universal answer.
however, society generally seems to give a person a fair amount of say in what will happen to the person’s own remains - why is cremation and having the ashes in an urn on your surviving spouse’s mantle okay? what about having some of the ashes in a locket around the surviving spouse’s neck?
There’s going to be no law about that per se. Local laws only cover common problems. So there might be a local law, say, requiring indigents to be buried rather than given to med schools, and there might be laws against desicration of burial grounds and bodies (common problems after wars or feuds).
I’ve seen skin portions mounted in tattoo parlors. If you can put it on a wall, you can put it on a book. (They will always tell you it was some dude who lost his arm in a combine accident, but I always suspect it’s a trophy from a gang murder.)