Summary

Regardless of the form of procedure, the objectives of a forensic examination are to establish circumstances relevant in a proceeding by applying specialist knowledge and thereby to contribute to the performance of the tasks in the proceeding. In order to fill in gaps in the regulation not covered by different procedure Acts and in order to gather all provisions governing forensic examination which are common to all forms of procedure into one Act, the Forensic Examination Act was passed by the Riigikogu on 31 May 2002. The Act entered into force on 1 January 2002. The author analyses whether, how and to what extent the intended objectives were achieved by passage of the Act. The author points out several shortcomings, and linguistic and legal errors of the Act.