Defaming the Dead. By Don Herzog. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2017. Pp. xii, 266. $40. Professor Don Herzog engages in two main pursuits with his entertaining book Defaming the Dead. His first pursuit is philosophical. He argues that the dead can be harmed by events that take place after their death. His second pursuit is political in that it argues for tort reform. More specifically, he wants a decedent’s estate to be able to sue for defamatory statements made after her death. Herzog links these pursuits together. He wants this bit of tort reform to be structured such that it vindicates the idea that the dead are harmed by posthumous defamation. The most fascinating parts of the book attempt to draw out our intuitions about posthumous harms by offering vivid accounts of gossip and gore … (more)
Sean H Williams, ‘Gossip and Gore: A Ghoulish Journey Into a Philosophical Thicket’, 116 Michigan Law Review 1187 (2018).
First posted 2018-04-17 15:41:11
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