Necrophilia

Abstract

This chapter offers a discussion of necrophilia, an offense that has been almost completely ignored in the criminal law theory literature but that raises interesting moral and conceptual issues—about the limits of the harm and wrong principles and the problem of the so-called missing subject. After ruling out a harm to third parties rationale, it suggests that the most plausible argument for criminalizing necrophilia is that it causes harm to the deceased person whose corpse is mistreated. But does it make sense to say that a person can suffer harms or wrongs postmortem? The question has an ancient philosophical pedigree and remains contentious. The chapter argues that the wrong caused by necrophilia is not to the corpse as such but to the antemortem person the corpse once embodied, who had an interest in maintaining her sexual autonomy while she was still alive.