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 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 HN 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.