PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE DECEASED

While the libertarian theory of property rights has been thoroughly studied, there has been minimal research done in regard to a deceased person's ability to dictate the future of the property he owned in life. In this paper, we attempt to develop a theory of the property rights of deceased people consistent with libertarian principles. We analyze the legitimacy of contracts between two individuals after one individual dies, ownership of the cadaver, the deceased's right to decide which actions are permissible to perform on the said cadaver, and the status of the deceased property when a will both has and has not been written. While there has been no explicit commentary made regarding these topics, outside from the will, the authors extrapolated current libertarian theories on property rights and applied them accordingly. While the authors of the paper ultimately do not reach a consensus agreement on some of the issues discussed in the paper, this exploratory work on the property rights of the deceased is intended to open further discussion and research on the matter to further contribute to the formulation of a concise libertarian legal theory.