Abstract
The republic's laissez-faire attitude led to the failure to establish a state-supported system of medicolegal officers, so physicians -- who made their money by treating individual patients -- found little remuneration available for medicolegal work. Even attempts by the American Medical Association and local medicolegal societies to revive medical jurisprudence and the introduction of professional medical examiners in some jurisdictions had the paradoxical effect of confirming the field's growing irrelevance. The consequences have been devastating: public policy is formulated without the systematic involvement of the medical profession; medical experts hired by the parties in legal cases battle to expensive stalemates; the malpractice system is at best a game of chance.