New faculty of forensic and legal medicine.

recently established a new Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine, a development of major importance to the specialty.1 The Faculty will set standards and offer education and training to a branch of the medical profession that, in the past, has evolved without the formal support of a medical royal college. Forensic medicine embraces a branch of medicine where medical expertise is brought to bear on the criminal justice system, and is practised by forensic physicians (formerly police surgeons or forensic medical examiners), forensic pathologists, sexual assault examiners, and child physical and sexual assault examiners. By contrast, legal medicine involves medical practitioners, such as medico-legal advisors and medically qualified coroners, who use their skills to give medico-legal advice in a clinical or judicial context. The Faculty has been founded to achieve the following objectives: • to promote for the public benefit the advancement of education and knowledge in the field of forensic and legal medicine • to establish a career pathway in forensic and legal medicine and achieve specialist recognition of the specialty • to develop and maintain for the public benefit the good practice of forensic and legal medicine by ensuring the highest professional standards of competence and ethical integrity • to act as an authoritative body for the purpose of consultation in matters of educational or public interest concerning forensic and legal medicine.