Kohen Physician Required by Government to Examine the Dead

Description

The Chasam Sofer rejects arguments permitting a Kohen-physician to defile himself when examining corpses as required by government regulation, refuting both the analogy to delayed burial and the Beis Yaakov's ruling on entering the room of a goseis. In an unpublicized postscript, however, he allows the community to rely on the Kohen-physician without incurring lifnei iver liability, since the Kohen already defiles himself for non-Jews voluntarily and the unburied Jewish corpse thereby attains the status of mes mitzvah.