Blood Justice: Courts, Conflict, and Compensation in Japan, France, and the United States

In the mid-1980s, many blood transfusion recipients and close to half of Japanese, American, and French hemophiliacs realized that they had been infected with HIV-contaminated blood. In this article I argue that the legal conflicts over HIV-tainted blood in those three nations defy conventional comp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law & society review 2000-01, Vol.34 (3), p.651-701
Main Author: Feldman, Eric A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
AIDS
Blood
Blood Banking - methods
Blood banks
Blood Banks - ethics
Blood Banks - history
Blood Banks - legislation & jurisprudence
Blood Banks - standards
Blood Diseases
Blood donation
Blood plasma
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusions
Compensation
Conflict
Courts
Crosscultural Analysis
Crossnational studies
France
Haemophiliacs
Health Policy
Hemophilia
Hemophilia A - history
History, 20th Century
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus
Japan
Jurisprudence - history
Law
Legal System
Litigation
Medical treatment
Plaintiffs
Public health
Sociology
Sociology of law and criminology
Sociology of law and justice
U.S.A
United States
United States of America
Workforce
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Summary:In the mid-1980s, many blood transfusion recipients and close to half of Japanese, American, and French hemophiliacs realized that they had been infected with HIV-contaminated blood. In this article I argue that the legal conflicts over HIV-tainted blood in those three nations defy conventional comparative claims about courts, conflict, and compensation. I first describe the similar policy responses of France, Japan, and the United States as public health officials came to realize that HIV threatened the safety of the blood supply. I then focus on what happened when infected individuals began to demand redress. I argue that the mobilization around law by plaintiffs, the centrality of the courts in handling conflicts over HIV and blood, and bold, innovative responses by the judiciary were not distinctive characteristics of the American conflict. Instead, law and courts in all three nations were central players in the battles over blood. Most strikingly, in comparison to courts in the United States, those in France and Japan have been significantly more responsive to plaintiffs' claims. When one looks beyond the courts to legal and legislative action more broadly, the United States has been the least accepting of the plethora of demands for recompense.
ISSN:0023-9216
1540-5893
DOI:10.2307/3115140