Death investigation and coronial practices have undergone significant social, political and legal scrutiny in recent years. A wave of coronial reform has occurred across jurisdictions, including in the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with a concomitant focus on the adequacy of death investigation law and policy. Taking key coronial developments in the UK and Australia as its starting point, this paper explores a legal jurisdiction undergoing immense legal and policy reform to illustrate why coronial law and practice is of increasing scholarly interest. It begins by tracing the contentious landscape of UK coronial law reform, which has also resonated internationally, thereafter examining key controversies that refocused attention on the value of the jurisdiction, before discussing contemporary coronial issues including, publicity, human rights and death prevention.

This article examines recent United Kingdom government proposals for secret inquests, which, it is argued, are part of a general push for secrecy discernible across common law jurisdictions, and which include developments such as increased recourse to sensitive evidence in forensic settings and the normalization of intelligence‐led policing. While the push for secrecy is justified by national security claims, the article shows that in cases of contentious death involving police, the issue is less about national security and more about the use of intercept evidence, covert surveillance, and intelligence‐led policing, all of which have implications for police trust, accountability, and reputation management.

When her exhibition “Operativo” opened at New York's Y Gallery, in July 2008, Mexican artist Teresa Margolles said, “Everyone dies but not everyone is murdered. I want people to recognize that.” Ostensibly, with this call for recognition, Margolles simultaneously gestures toward both the universality of death and the crucial differentiation of its genres. Death is not a standardized moment or an equal event; it can be untimely, premature, and violent. As such, death spotlights difference; death has a social life that is contextualized by brutality, inequality, poverty, and politics. To achieve this recognition Margolles works in medico-legal and forensic spaces, creating aesthetic pieces from the remains of crime. This essay examines a number of artworks by Margolles as she deals in death scenes that exceed the boundaries of “typical” criminological, political, or juridical discourse. The essay explores dimensions of Margolles's practice to examine additionally the constitutive value of aesthetic projects that deal in violent death.

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This Special Issue, Frontiers in Coronial Justice, reflects on the future of death investigation studies in the coronial context. Where the uptake of the death studies movement in the social sciences more broadly has expanded the interdisciplinary study of death, comparatively little attention has focused on the work of coroners or their death investigation practices. Important, but albeit ad hoc, contributions from the disciplines of medicine, law, public health and criminology, highlight both the possibilities for coronial scholarship and how coronial studies continue to percolate at disciplinary margins. And yet, there is growing social attention to death generally, from death cafés to death salons, and the 'positive death movement' more broadly. Society is clustering around conversations seeking social change in facing death, including preparatory discussions around end of life wishes and options. Yet, by their very nature, unexpected, sudden or violent deaths -those that fall under the jurisdiction of the coroner -constitute a distinct category of death; one that is, in many ways, incapable of being prepared for. Nevertheless, such deaths present instances of considerable medical, legal and social industry, with attendant issues around autopsy and inquests, for example. This industry is also changing, as coronial law and policy reform across international jurisdictions has refined, clarified and sought to evolve the coronial role. Together, these developments evidence why coronial law and practice deserve sustained attention. Correspondingly, a theme that unites the papers in this special issue is a greater appreciation of the principles and practices of coronial death investigation. It is intended that, by showcasing work that cuts across law, socio-legal studies, criminology and history, this Special Issue will contribute to delivering new frontiers in coronial research.At a snapshot, the genres of scholarly attention to the coronial jurisdiction are wide and varied. Coroners' work has intermittently piqued the attention of socio-legal scholars (e.g. Wells, 1991Wells, , 1996Sampson, 2003;Pemberton, 2008; Corrin and Douglas, 2008), and legal scholars have canvassed specific issues, such as human rights, in the context of coronial work and litigation (Hunyor, 2008(Hunyor, , 2009O'Brien, 2009;Ismail, 2010;Hyam, 2010;Chevalier-Watts, 2010;McIntosh, 2012;Freckelton and McGregor, 2014), including literature that touches upon deaths in certain contexts, such as Northern Ireland (e.g. Bell and Keenan, 2005). Save few exceptions, criminological scholarship is found largely wanting on any wholesale attention to theorising death investigation. As a research focus, coronial work has been addressed through methodological questions, such as the value of using coronial data (e.g. Pelfry and White Covington, 2007), or where coronial processes and documents (coronial findings, inquest proceedings and transcripts) form the basis for case-study research (e.g. Cunneen, 2006;Prenzler, 2010;Porter, 2013). Until recently, case-...