Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 10:3-22 (1990).
Abstract
This paper describes contrasting legal responses to mass disaster by comparing accountability and remedy in 1980's India, displayed in the response to the Bhopal gas leak disaster, with the response to disasters in two different eras of modem American history. Examination of the early 1930's Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster in West Virginia and otherpre-Worid War Two disasters reveals a system of low and uneven recovery, minimal vindication and low accountability. In contrast, examination of recent industrial disasters suggests the emergence of a high accountability/high remedy system that provides more ample, if still uneven, recovery. The Indian system revealed by Bhopal is seen as partaking of social practices of risk exposure, remedy and compensation reminiscent of pre-Worid War II America, but this takes place in a setting of ideology and mass communications that are akin to those found on the "after" side.
