Clearly zombies are having a moment. Unlike vampires (trés passé) and werewolves (so overdone), the Walking Dead have moved on to the next level. Sure anyone could have a a hit AMC show or a literary mash-up with an Austen novel, but you know you hit the big time when someone’s on Kickster trying to raise money to write a legal casebook about you. Yeah you heard me. Someone is writing a casebook on zombie law.
According to the Kickster project page for Zombie Law: Zombies in the Federal Courts; a case book, there are more than 300 references to zombies (using terms such as “‘zombies’ and ‘zombi’ and ‘zombified’ and ‘zombielike’ and ‘zombified’ and ‘zombism’ etc[.]”) in federal court cases. Ever the skeptic I did a quick search on Westlaw and Lexis and found that the term comes up more than you would think. Actually, a lot more than you would think.
Joshua Warren is the inventive attorney at the helm of this endeavor, and in his description of the project claims that this casebook “is different because it does not use zombies as hypotheticals to teach law. It is not conjecture about what zombies are or might be. This book is a compendium of real usages of the actual word in American jurisprudence.”
An interesting concept to be sure. However, if you care more about preparing for a potential zombie apocalypse, perhaps Adam Chodorow’s Death and Taxes and Zombies would be your preferred zombie legal literature.