On Death and Dying

Flipping through the most recent issue of the Columbia University alumni magazine, I noticed a brief article focusing on a former law professor of mine from Rutgers Law School--Newark, Norman Cantor. Professor Cantor's seminar, Death and Dying, was a course that was justifiably well regarded by Rutgers students.

Professor Cantor has just published a new book, After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, whose cover illustrates this blog post. According to the Columbia piece, in his book, "Cantor conducts a legal and historical examination of the disposition and treatment of the human corpse that leaves no stone unturned." The interview with Cantor was conducted at Bodies: The Exhibition in Lower Manhattan. The exhibit is not for the faint of heart. Again from the Columbia piece,

Inside the dimly lit rooms of the gallery were about 20 human bodies in various stages of dissection, preserved through the technique of plastination, by which water and lipids are replaced with polymers and dies. The finished product is both remarkably lifelike and strangely inhuman. Facial features are erased in the process, destroying individuality.

My daughter the scientist has been to the Bodies exhibit, but it's not the kind of thing I am eager to pay to see. Call me squeamish. However, it was interesting to read Cantor's reaction to the exhibition, and to learn about the origins of his interest in the disposition of the body after death. I enjoyed catching up with a favorite professor through this brief but compelling article.

Setback for Law School Clinics

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, that "has denied the legal clinics of that state's public law schools immunity from its open-records law, exposing them to new document requests that could greatly complicate their work." The defendants in the case were Rutgers University and the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic, part of the law school's well-regarded clinical program. The suit was brought by a "real-estate developer [Sussex Commons Associates] whose plans to build an outlet mall were successfully opposed by a citizens' group represented by the clinic." The attorneys for the developer "are seeking documents that .. will show that the owner of two existing outlet malls conspired with the citizens' groups and the clinic to thwart Sussex Commons's mall plans." At issue was New Jersey's Open Public Records Act, 47 N.J.S.A. 1A-1-1A-13, to which, according to the court, the legal clinics are subject as public institutions. Clinicians worry that short-staffed law school clinics will be drowned by discovery requests from law firms; most clinics do not have the resources to take on such requests, and having to comply with open-records laws might well result in clinics refusing to take on certain clients or cases. It sounds to me that New Jersey's law needs to be amended to make it clear that it is not meant to apply to the legal clinics at the state's two public law schools. It's hard to tell if that is feasible in today's political climate.