Organization of legal and forensic medicine in Spain

The organization of Legal and Forensic Medicine in Spain has undergone important structural and functional changes. Social, legislative, and technological progress has determined an evolution in the form of access, scope of action, organizational dependence, functions, specialisation, provision of resources, extrajudicial activities, and relations with other institutions. The figure of the forensic doctor attached to a court, isolated, polyvalent, with no teaching or research activity is now a thing of the past. The figure of the Institutes already provided for in Organic Law 6/1985 of 1 July 1985 on the Judiciary promoted unity of action, teamwork, specialisation and training, teaching, and research. The enactment of Royal Decree 144/2023, of 28 February, approving the Regulations of the Institutes of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences has allowed these technical bodies to adapt to the process of modernisation of justice and to the necessary social and health projection of forensic sciences. We must look to the future and adapt the organizational structure, the functioning of the institutes, and the regulations for their creation and entry into operation to the new changes.