Concerns about the cost and environmental consequences of the "traditional" American model of burial-embalming, casket, vault, single perpetual grave-are prompting the first significant challenges to American disposition practices since the Civil War. Burial itself is even being challenged-the popularity of cremation has exploded in recent decades and it will soon become the dominant practice. Americans eager to innovate in deathcare find that the law-still heavily rooted in 17th century English, Protestant practices and beliefs-is ill-equipped to adapt. Cemetery law in the United States has...
Concerns about the cost and environmental consequences of the "traditional" American model of burial-embalming, casket, vault, single perpetual grave-...