This is a comprehensive reference text that examines the current state of Legal Medicine, which encompasses Forensic Medicine, in the 21st century. It examines the scope of both legal and forensic medicine, its application and study and has adopted a wide ranging approach including multinational authorship. It reviews the differences between and similarities of forensic and legal medicine, the need for academic qualification, the applications to many and varied fields including international aid, military medicine, health law and the application of medical knowledge to both criminal law and tort/civil law, sports medicine and law, gender and age related factors from obstetrics through to geriatrics and palliative care as well as cultural differences exploring the Christian/Judeo approach compared with that within Islamic cultures, Buddhism and Hinduism. The book looks at practical applications of legal medicine within various international and intercultural frameworks.  This is aseminal authoritative text in legal and forensic medicine. It has a multi-author and multinational approach which crosses national boundaries. There is a great interest in the development of health law and legal medicine institutes around the world and this text comes in on the ground floor of this burgeoning discipline and provides the foundation text for many courses, both undergraduate and postgraduate. It defines the place of legal medicine as a specialized discipline.​

Roy G. Beran is a consultant neurologist and accredited sleep physician with extensive qualifications, including MBBS, MD, FRACP, FRCP(Ed), FAAN, FANZAN, MHL, and others. He is registered with AHPRA in Neurology, Public Health, and Sleep Medicine. He has served as a medical assessor for NSW insurance bodies, a Designated Aviation Medical Examiner, and a Neurology Consultant for the Royal Australian Navy. Academically, he is Conjoint Professor at UNSW, Griffith University, and Western Sydney University, and has held visiting professorships in China and the UK. Prof. Beran is a founding Fellow and Past President of the Australasian College of Legal Medicine (ACLM), now Honorary Life Fellow and Co-Head of Faculty. He is Immediate Past President and Australian Governor of the World Association for Medical Law (WAML), and was Editor-in-Chief of its journal Medicine and Law.

He has published over 410 papers, presented more than 470 times, and authored/edited 17 books. His research spans concussion, epilepsy, stroke, sleep, neuroimaging, and medical education. In 2022, he co-founded the Australian Magnetic Resonance Imaging Association and serves as Vice President.

A former Commander in the RAN Reserves, he was awarded membership of the Order of Australia in 2015.