Legal Status of the Grave as a Site of Memory: A Human Dignity Perspective

Abstract

The grave serves two functions: it is a physical resting place, and it is a symbolic site where funerary monuments preserve the deceased’s memory. Viewing the grave through the lens of human dignity, the paper explores the rights of the dead and the living by addressing whether the deceased enjoy a post‑mortem right to preservation of their memory through their grave, and whether the living possess a continuing right to maintain and curate the grave as an act of care and remembrance. It concludes by calling for statutory frameworks that treat the grave as a protected space where human dignity persists through memory conveyed by the funeral monument and the interrelated rights of the dead and the living are upheld.