John Troyer, a newly arrived scholar at the University of Bath's Centre for Death and Society, dug up evidence of a little-unappreciated gap in the law. His study, called Abuse of a Corpse: A Brief History and Re-Theorisation of Necrophilia Laws in the USA, appears in the only-occasionally-ghoulish journal Mortality.

Troyer spotlights an incident that frustrated the police and the courts of one American state. He writes: "In September 2006, Wisconsin police discovered Nicholas Grunke, Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radtke digging into the grave of a recently deceased woman. Upon questioning by police, Alexander Grunke explained that the three men wanted to exhume the body for sexual intercourse. In the Wisconsin state court system, the three men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and attempted theft. None of the men could be charged with attempted necrophilia, since the state of Wisconsin has no law making necrophilia illegal.

"What the Wisconsin case exposed was the following gap in US jurisprudence: many states have no law prohibiting necrophilia."

Troyer sketches the court's dilemma: "Since [the victim] was already dead at the time of the alleged crime and therefore no longer a person before the law, her body was legally recognised as human remains and not as a victim ... Nicholas Grunke, Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radtke were then charged with the remaining illegal acts, namely, damage to cemetery property and attempted theft of movable property, a category that included [the victim's] corpse. What shocked many of the case's observers was that even if the three men had actually succeeded in taking the body from the grave, they could have only been charged with theft of private property since [the victim's] post-mortem body belonged to her parents."

On March 5, 2008, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments as to how it might overcome the legal lacunae. You can click here to listen to a recording - which begins with a cheery "We are delighted to welcome with us West Salem high school students".

The 50 American states differ in their legal grasp of (and on) necrophilia, and the federal government offers them little guidance.

Some nations are more organised in their view of the subject. The UK, especially, gives it special focus. Section 70 of the 2003 Sexual Offences Act is entitled Sexual Penetration of a Corpse. Section 70 explicitly, very explicitly, prohibits only the most canonical form of necrophilia. Troyer notes that "UK law seems to preclude other sexual acts [Troyer lists several of them] from being considered criminal."

The niceties of the law, especially those pertaining to uncommon activities, suffer a reputation for being abstruse, boring, dull. But Troyer has unearthed an exception. As his study points out: "Necrophilia is that rare kind of sexual deviancy that truly captures public attention with its abject perversity and titillating, lascivious details."

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize. On Thursday, the 18th Ig Nobel prize ceremony at Harvard will announce this year's 10 winners. "Britain will do well," warns organiser Marc Abrahams.