Forensic Neuropathology and Neurology - The formal tasks that forensic pathologists and neuropathologists are asked to perform in the courts vary from country to country according to convention and statute, and will therefore not be dealt with in detail here. For details on the role of expert forensic witnesses in U.S. courts, the reader is referred to Leestma and Magee (1988), and for the English system to Knight (1996). In all different countries the forensic pathologist/neuropathologist is accountable primarily to legal authorities, i.e., the judiciary, lawyers, and/or public prosecutors. But they cannot avoid an additional, specifically medical/ethical responsibility, which extends to questions of experimental neuropathology and neurology, i.e., the use of certain experimental diagnostic and therapeutic methods, and to civil and political actions such as maltreatment and torture.
To our knowledge, no legal system in the world places physicians as physicians under the threat of civil liability. Physicians, therefore, are subject to the general rules of liability, with the effect that modern laws of medical liability are a part of case law created by the courts in most countries.
