Blood Test

What does Blood Test mean in American Law?

The definition of Blood Test in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

Of the many kinds of scientific tests which can be performed on blood, four are of particular legal significance. One is the test (there are several now) to detect the presence of syphilis or other venereal disease, the successful (i.e., negative) passage of which is, in many jurisdictions, a precondition to the issuance of a marriage license. The “Wasserman test” for syphilis was the earliest (early twentieth century) successful one, and it is still in use.

The second legally important group of blood tests are those designed to identify with precision the source of a particular blood stain or other blood sample. Early tests (e.g., the early “Bernstein test”) used as the method of dfferentiation only the four main blood types (A, B, AB, and 0) and thus, while it was sometimes possible to exclude someone as source of the blood, it was impossible to make a positive identification. Subsequently, much more sophisticated tests made the positive identification of particular blood sources generally possible, and these can be applied to almost any bodily fluid, e.g., saliva, semen, and sweat, or indeed to any body cell.

The last major legally relevant blood tests are those which are designed to detect genetic connections between individuals, e.g., to determine if one person is the biological parent of another. The earliest tests were sufficient only to establish the impossibility of parentage, though later refinements have made positive identification also feasible. (Modern genetic testing makes positive identification essentially certain, but it can be operated on any cells of the two relevant bodies, and thus the most modern tests are not necessarily blood tests any more.)

English Legal System: Blood Test

In the context of the English law, A Dictionary of Law provides the following legal concept of Blood Test : 1. An analysis of blood designed to show that a particular man could not be the father of a specified child (it cannot establish that the person is the father). The court may order blood tests in disputes about paternity, but a man cannot be compelled to undergo the test against his will. His refusal may, however, lead the court to draw adverse conclusions. Any attempt to take blood without consent would be trespass.

See also dna fingerprinting.

2.

See specimen of blood.