The Exercise of Rights
Project period: 2024-2026
In private law, it is common to distinguish between persons and property. This line is also drawn in succession law: succession law governs the fate of assets, whereas the fate of the person and personhood are determined outside succession law. It is not the heirs who decide on what happens to the organs, corpse and memory of the deceased, but persons who are determined according to other legal rules and who are vested with a wide variety of legal powers. This research project will be the first to trace these scattered and – until now – unsystematically explored legal rules back to fundamentally shared premises and focus upon them through the exercise of rights. The study also aims to examine the conventional distinction between persons and property, particularly in terms of the dividing line. In doing so, the study also calls into question the implicit acceptance according to which succession law is currently limited to succession in respect of assets.