Law Commons^™

The Economic Theory Of Nuisance Law And Implications For Environmental Regulation, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, I will explore in detail the structure of nuisance law as a mechanism for regulating environmental interferences and suggest a modernized enforcement regime. The modem regime would retain public enforcement primarily in identifying environmental harms. Public enforcement might also be retained in the discovery of sources of harm, as long as it is more efficient than private enforcement in that task. However, enforcement efforts in the proposed regime would largely be delegated to private enforcers. Moreover, the decentralized approach would permit tougher environmental rules than under the public enforcement approach in some areas, and perhaps weaker regulations …