In most legal systems, it is crucial that evidence that is obtained for use in any judicial proceedings, especially criminal prosecutions, is obtained lawfully. In other words, no crimes should be committed in the obtaining and examining of any evidence, which will be later, be relied upon in court. Section 86 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 in South Africa crea...

Laws are costly to enforce. We explore the implications of this principle in a model where the design of the laws and their enforcement are determined jointly. A benevolent government trades off the benefit of a stricter legal standard with the cost of its enforcement. Therefore, legal standards and enforcement are complements, and increase in aggregate wealth. If bureaucrats are corruptible, t...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of the medical documentation and biological trace evidence in rape cases on the legal process. DESIGN Retrospective descriptive study. SETTING AND SAMPLE Police-reported cases of rape of women ≥16 years old in the Norwegian county of Sør-Trøndelag from January 1997 to June 2003. METHODS Police data were merged with data from the Sexual Assault Center at St O...

Neuroscientific imaging evidence (NIE) has become an integral part of the criminal justice system in the United States. However, in most legal cases, NIE is submitted and used only to mitigate penalties because the court does not recognize it as substantial evidence, considering its lack of reliability. Nevertheless, we here discuss how neuroscience is expected to improve the use of NIE in the ...

The legal system should rely much more than it now does on statistical evidence. It should be cautious about the judgments of experts, who make predictable cognitive errors. Like everyone else, experts have a tendency to blunder about risk, a point that has been shown to hold for doctors, whose predictions significantly err in the direction of optimism. We present new evidence that individual d...

CONTEXT Physicians need to consider medical-legal issues when volunteering their time to assist with community mass-participation and athletic events. This article also reviews medical-legal aspects of the volunteer physician's out-of-state practice. Seven cases illustrate the importance of expertise and planning to avoid legal issues for the volunteer event physician. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION Re...

When a patient's care becomes the subject of medical-legal litigation, those from healthcare involved in the case may not understand the decisions of the lawyers and the final judgment of the judge. An appreciation of how legal professionals review healthcare decisions requires an understanding of the process that courts follow in analyzing medical cases and arriving at their own legal judgment...

Article history: Received 25 August 2015 Received in revised form 17 November 2015 Accepted 17 November 2015 Available online 18 November 2015 Law is a powerful tool for combatting public health issues. This article reviews existing empirical research on the effect of eight legal levers on outcomes related to child maltreatment. Laws created with the intent to address child maltreatment are oft...

I express my gratitude to the Royal Society. It has played a key role in bringing together scientists and others interested in forensic science. By hosting the conference ‘The paradigm shift for UK Forensic Science’ it has provided a true forum to share developments and engage in discussion. I wish to pay particular tribute to Professors Sue Black and Niamh Nic Daeid for their vision, their org...

Sterilisation is one of the most common procedures in the world. Around 50,000 female sterilisations are performed every year in the UK, although there is a suggestion of a worldwide downward trend in sterilisation procedures. Surgical techniques used in female sterilisation are designed to prevent pregnancy by occluding tubal patency through mechanical device application, electrocautery or by ...