Somehow I don’t think that when Thomas Browne wrote ‘Urn-Burial’ he was thinking of the situation in Germany. You can be cremated here but after that you have to be buried!

bq. Great princes affected great monuments; and the fair and larger urns contained no vulgar ashes, which makes that disparity in those which time discovereth among us.

An interview in Focus indicates that Saxony-Anhalt is considering relaxing this legislation. (So does that mean that the law of burial, like that of translators and interpreters, is a matter for the Länder?)

bq. Sachsen-Anhalt plant eine Novelle des Bestattungsrechts. Dabei ist vorgesehen, den Friedhofszwang für Feuerbestattungen in bundesweit bislang einzigartiger Weise zu lockern. Hinterbliebene könnten demnach die Urne mit der Asche ihres Angehörigen mit nach Hause nehmen und ins Bücherregal stellen oder im Garten vergraben.

I love the way they say people will be able to put their next of kin’s ashes on the bookshelf. This is a sort of stereotype idea of how weird it would be not to bury the ashes.

A representative of the Evangelische Landeskirche fears ‘Bestattungstourismus’ (a word that gets me 62 ghits).
(Via Handakte WebLAWg)

See photo.

This reminds me of the joke: ‘Mit ihm ist ein erstklassiger Anwalt gestorben.’ – ‘Was, zwei Männer in einem Grab?’

(Via Udo, who also links to this)

If you are going into law and can’t manage the numeracy of the last entry, you might consult this firm (did they not take part in spelling bees?)

(Thanks to Trevor)

Clemens Mayer, 19, about to start as a law student, has won the Deutsche Gedächtnismeisterschaft (German memory championships).

In 30 minutes he learnt 1040 numbers. He associates each number between 0 and 99 with a symbol – a cow, a mouse, a pen.

bq. Der angehende Jura-Student Clemens Mayer, 19, aus Brannenburg hat die Deutsche Gedächtnismeisterschaft gewonnen. Damit löste er Gunter Karsten ab, der diesen Titel sieben Mal in Folge gewann.

He also managed to associate 85 names with faces. He trains for this every day by cutting out hundreds of faces from Quelle or Otto catalogues, under each of which his mother writes a fictitious name.

I suppose it’s good mental training for both of them. I just have this picture of them sitting there with the catalogues and the scissors.

(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

I’m pleased to see a parody online of the dreadful We’re not Afraid (of terrorists) site. It’s the i am fucking terrified site (some offensive language and not all very funny, though).

Via Boing Boing

Roy Stuart was Law Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1969 until his retirement in 2003 and died in June 2005 aged 68. There is a column by David Pannick in the Times Online law section (registration free) – I haven’t found an obituary.

In one of the untidiest rooms in England, Roy would lead his tutorial pupils towards an understanding of the principles of criminal law, contract and jurisprudence with a mixture of wit, empathy and intellectual rigour, stirred with a measure of cynicism.

When he made an interesting point, or more rarely when one of his pupils made what he considered to be a valuable contribution, he would bounce up and down with excitement. And who could forget his tutorial on the legal problems posed by R v Bourne (the defendant who forced his wife to have sex with their dog), complete with “Get down, Rover!” actions? Roy Stuart told us that he argued only one case as an advocate in Canada and was frustrated that the judge did not understand the point he was making. So he decided that the academic life was more appropriate for him.