The harm of death and the transferability of the right to compensation: A comparative study

Abstract

This study aims to determine how the right of compensation for death is transferable to the heirs. It is agreed that harming a human body should warrant compensation. Even if it does not result in financial losses, it is considered an attack on the human body. Nevertheless, the prevailing trend in positive law still hesitates to consider the harm of death in itself, a harm that requires compensation. On the contrary, we find that Islamic jurisprudence considers the matter in its natural and logical setting from a long time ago. It is decided to guarantee and compensate for bodily damages, whether they resulted from deadly or non-deadly injury, regardless of the financial losses and consequences or moral damages that result from this damage. By referring to the Jordanian civil law, it becomes clear that compensation for bodily harm is carried out according to the rules of blood money, whose provisions are derived from Islamic jurisprudence and the provisions of Western laws, especially those related to the inclusion of compensation for the actual damage in its moral and material aspects, and its elements of actual loss and lost profit, which some jurists believe. Contemporary Muslims have what supports it in the rules of compensation in Islamic jurisprudence, especially the rule that there is no harm and no foul. In this study, we address how compensation for the harm of death is transferable to heirs in legal jurisprudence and the judiciary system and how the right to compensation for the harm of death is transferable to the heirs in Islamic jurisprudence. The comparative approach between legal jurisprudence and Islamic jurisprudence has been applied, based on strengthening jurisprudential positions with judicial positions closely related to the subject. The study recommended that the Jordanian Court of Cassation amend its jurisprudence and re-consider the death damage guarantee as material compensation for independent material damage. This should be transferred to the heirs through the inheritance and is claimed under the hereditary lawsuit, as it violated the provision of Article 274 of the Jordanian Civil Code, which authorized the death damage compensation. It also violated what was followed by Islamic civil jurisprudence and comparative judiciary.