Oh god no! You’ve got Maritime law, which almost exclusively deals with pirates. There’s Torts (strawberry was always my favorite). Antitrust is just like that exercise where you stand behind someone and they close their eyes and fall backwards and you catch them — except you don’t catch them. Evidence, which is filled with bloody knives, hatchets, and CSI-like hijinks. Estate planning where you’re given tons of fake money and you have to pretend you’re a zillionaire lawyer (and plan what type of estate you are going to buy, natch). And of course you’ve got all the “and the law” classes — Art and the Law (fingerpainting), Science and the Law (basically exploring the legal implications of killer robots and androids), and my favorite, Women and the Law (if you’ve never seen a woman in a bikini wearing a judge’s wig and, er, banging a gavel, well… let me tell you YOWZA!) And then, of course, there’s property which has zombies.
And people wonder why there are so many lawyers nowadays!
I think it would depend upon just how common zombie outbreaks were.
If there was only one such outbreak in all of human history, and it was contained or defeated so that society continued much as before, it would be regarded as an aberration and the law wouldn’t change much, if at all. Any litigation that resulted would be decided based upon long-settled principles of jurisprudence. I suspect that zombies would be regarded as “dead” for purposes of the inheritance of property, as they are incapable of caring for or improving property, cannot sue or be sued, like to eat probate judges’ brains, etc. Public-policy interests suggest that zombies would not be considered as either living or human.
And if zombie outbreaks were relatively common, Congress and/or the state legislatures would have addressed this recurring social problem with legislation. The solons would not want to encourage zombieism, or to muddy the waters of who gets what if an inheritor turns into a zombie. They’d also want to encourage prompt responses from the military and law enforcement, probably classifying zombies as public menaces much like rabid dogs, killable by anyone without fear of legal repercussions.
I wish I had such interesting questions back when I was in law school. Wills and Trusts (aka “Stiffs and Gifts”) would’ve been a lot more fun.
I’m not sure this is correct. In “Day of the Dead”, Bob the Zombie is capable of saluting and (I think) operating a gun. In “Land of the Dead”, several zombies are shown using tools, and one of them leads a fairly well-organized army of zombies. Zombies may not be capable of sophisticated or purely aesthetic improvements to land, and they may require at least some guidance from living humans, but I think it’s probable that high-functioning zombies could build crude shelters, clear abandoned lots of debris, etc.
In other words, zombies would be capable of blending their labor with the land - and this is a long-recognized basis for property ownership. For example, adverse possession cases are much likelier to go in favor of the adverse possessor if he’s improved the property.
As for not being able to sue or be sued - you’re probably correct that zombies lack the higher reasoning powers (or lack thereof) required for litigation, but a court could always appoint a guardian ad litem if a zombie was sued.
I’m not saying that zombies wouldn’t necessarily be seen as “dead” for inheritance purposes, but I don’t think they would be seen as such because of the incapacities you mentioned. Your public-policy argument (not wanting to encourage tolerance of zombie-ism) is probably more the way courts and legislatures would go.
I would assume that the behavior of any persons described as ‘zombies’, either literaly or figuratively, would by definition fall within the Uncanny Valley.
I’m no law student, but I expect zombie law would probably fall within the “Illegal because patently immoral” category, rather than the “Illegal because prohibited” one.
As sympathetic as I am to the “kill all Zack” principle, I’m disquieted by some contrary evidence undermining the subhuman theory. Not only did the Romeroesque zombie universe have allowance for some limited zombie sentience and socialization (Land of the Dead), but the coda ending to Shaun of the Dead depicts zombies as continuing to hold down menial, entry-level jobs, living at home (or in a shed or a padded, secure room) with their still-human families, and associating with their friends. I’m no lawyer, but that seems to suggest that zombies are not necessarily or at least entirely non compos mentis. At the very least, wouldn’t zombies have to be declared subhuman or dead on an individual basis, following a thorough examination by a professionally qualified expert (psychiatrist, or maybe a “zombieologist,” etc.)? And under this framework, couldn’t zombification be just another entry in the DSM-IV?
A post-Z-Day world would be revolutionized indeed: along with the legions of the undead would be entirely new categories of legal, medical, psychiatric and government social-welfare service providers, and new provisions in civil and criminal law. Everything from marriage contracts to EEOC and fair-housing statutes to the criminal justice system would reflect the advent of the undead.
There’s a wonderful history of an extreme case of Maritime jurisprudence, The Custom of the Sea by Neil Hanson. Said “custom” being the desperate resort to [sometimes murder-facilitated] cannibalism amongst survivors of shipwrecks and related measures, such as throwing some survivors overboard to better ensure the survival of the rest. According to the author, a very healthy and distressingly active subfield of British jurisprudence evolved (generally 17th-19th C’s) under the rubric of “Lifeboat Law,” and some lawyers even made it their specialty. The actual number of unfortunate individuals thus imbricated in one mishap or another was shockingly high, involving over these centuries quite possibly tens of thousands of survivors and hundreds of thousands lost (and usually never found). British law evolved to incorporate a certain pragmatic and compassionate accomodation towards the survivors of such cases; eventually even instances of homicide for purposes of cannibalism were exonerated, provided that certain fairness provisions had been maintained (such as the drawing of lots, to ensure genuine randomness in the selection of the victim).
I’ve joked that I’d only become a lawyer to practice lifeboat law… and I’ve yet to meet someone who knew what the hell I was talking about.
Clearly the Rule Against Perpetuities does not apply.
It’s been nigh on 20 years, but as I recall: Any interest must vest, if ever, within 21 years after the death of a LIFE IN BEING at the time the interest is created.
Excuse me if I have it wrong. It’s been a long time and it’s late.
Anyway.
A zombie is a dead person. Perhaps they are also an animated unholy undead person as well – that’s subject to debate.
But clearly a zombie is dead and therefore no longer a life in being. C’s re-animated status has no bearing on the issue. “Living” dead or “Dead” dead, C is dead and therefore unable to acquire title to real or personal property.
However, I feel compelled to point out that at least 7 out of the 11 beings surveyed are likely zombies themselves, therefore invalidating this result.
For a pretty good examination of these issues, check out the French film Les Revenants (English title: They Came Back), which has the dead in a small, present-day French town coming back to life and the problems caused thereby. They don’t come back as brain-eating monsters; they come back pretty much as themselves (or do they?). They’re bummed that their spouses have remarried, they’re distressed because their old jobs are taken now, etc., and the city government has to figure out how to deal with all these new people with “unusual” medical conditions.
Granted, it gets a bit more supernatural later on, but the whole thing is really low-key and cool. Probably the least scary and most thought-provoking zombie movie I’ve seen.
Well, I’ll be damned! That’s it – Dudley was the captain of the Mignionette. Probably the chief problem he and his co-defendant had upon their rescue, was that in selecting their victim they followed common sense (and self-interest) instead of drawing lots – and then admitting as much after the fact.
Back to the zombies – in a post-Z world, there’s entire categories of employment which might be taken over (or relegated to) zombies, due to their already being biologically dead, not having to breathe, and being possibly insensate to pain. OTTOMH, rescue and recovery work, fire-fighting, response teams for radiation/chemical/bio agent crises, r&r- and salvage-diving operations, coal mining, asbestos and lead-paint removal, cleaning out industrial tanks, sewage treatment plant, recycling ops… to say nothing of high-risk military applications. Of course, the zombies might have to be specially restrained with face masks or mouth guards, as in the case of rescue & recovery work, or carefully segregated from the living to prevent accidental contamination (as in clearing minefields or finding I.E.D.s in Iraq), but we the living are resourceful and clever opportunists.
I think we may be overlooking the most important issue, which is whether zombies, as quasi-living animi, would be deprived of their Constitutional rights should they not be allowed to inherit property based on their “undead” status.
This whole issue turns not on whether zombies are living or dead, but whether they are “people”. Arguments could be made either way, but I think most would agree they they are “people”, even if somehow mentally incapacitated. Therefore, if they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and the state within which they reside, which clearly they are because otherwise the police wouldn’t chase them down when they destroy property and rip people limb from limb, then they have a right to equal protection of the laws. Categorically depriving zombies of their property without due process of law would be a gross miscarriage of justice.
Edited to add: My crim law professor made sure we well and understood that Dudley and Stephens killed the kid to drink his blood - it was liquid they needed, not food. Ewwwwwwwww.
Good point re: the 14th Amendment. That’s why I think they would be legislatively put in a category all their own, which (given their typical and apparently immutable homicidal and destructive behavior) would justify their destruction on sight.
