With the exception of the most primitive societies, the transmission of death investigation practices was a necessary component for the establishment of the rule of law. From the late sixteenth century through to the nineteenth century, as European states acquired political control over vast overseas territories, they had to determine whether to maintain existing indigenous legal systems or to replace them with the mechanism of European continental law and its agencies for the administration of colonial societies. This related to substantive as well as procedural law (i.e. the organization of courts and judges). Where states could establish direct rule, Europeans introduced their own laws. The introduction of European law could either mean the adoption of the legal code of the metropole or the development of new laws adapted to suit colonial rule, but built on European legal principals and procedures. In some instances, the indigenous culture required the amalgamation of European and indigenous legal systems. In short, European colonial expansion was also the expansion of European law.

During the conquest and acquisition of New World colonies, England and the European powers required colonists to create legal systems of governance that would replicate the structure of Old World justice in the newly formed colonies. Medical jurisprudence, broadly defined as the use of medical knowledge by those who exercise legal authority, was an essential practice in the practice of law.