This Article offers a theory of nuisance law based on information costs. Like trespass, much of the law of nuisance relies on a strategy of exclusion in which rights are defined using low-cost signals like boundary crossings that are only indirectly tied to particular uses. Nuisance law also supplements and fine-tunes this Blackstonian package of entitlements by means of a governance strategy, which relies on signals more directly tailored to particular uses. The information-cost advantage of strategies close to the exclusion end of the spectrum helps explain why, despite repeated calls for more balancing, nuisance law focuses on who caused invasions of whose land. Also consistent with an exclusion strategy are the staying power of traditional nonreciprocal notions of causation and the virtual nonexistence in nuisance of Rule 4 liability rules, under which plaintiffs would be permitted to invoke the law to force the polluter either to abate or shut down upon payment of the polluter’s damages. Applying Hohfeldian analysis, the Article shows that the common law gives polluters at most a privilege to pollute and that Rule 4 does not refine the basic exclusion regime but rather undermines it. The general question becomes when to soften exclusion with governance and the Article concludes by arguing that, in situations such as oil and gas fields and Boomer-style pollution cases with numerous victims, only small judicial governance-style safety valves are necessary, especially if legislative and administrative solutions are forthcoming. More generally, the information-cost theory of nuisance brings the utilitarian and corrective justice approaches to nuisance closer together. Nuisance law is not a mess or mystery but does contain within it the inflection point between exclusion and governance.
Issue 4
Citizenship Denied: The Insular Cases and the Fourteenth Amendment
Pursuant to the doctrine of territorial incorporation established in the Insular Cases, Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated” territory, and as such, it does not form part of the United States within the meaning of the Constitution. As a result, persons born in Puerto Rico are not “born in the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment and are not constitutionally entitled to citizenship. Because they enjoy only statutory citizenship, Congress arguably is able to expatriate most Puerto Ricans if the island is declared independent. Moreover, the inferior citizenship status of Puerto Ricans reveals a grave inconsistency in the law of the Fourteenth Amendment that has never been addressed. In response to Dred Scott, the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the common law doctrine of jus soli, which provides that all persons born on U.S. territory and not subject to the jurisdiction of another sovereign are native-born citizens, regardless of race. Pursuant to this interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, persons born in Puerto Rico have been “born in the United States” since the ratification of the Treaty of Paris. By retroactively narrowing the scope of the term “United States,” the Supreme Court took advantage of the unique geographical circumstances of the insular territories and prevented their inhabitants from obtaining equal citizenship. Thus, the doctrine of territorial incorporation reasserts Dred Scott’s race-based approach to citizenship and should be overruled.
Judicial Sincerity
Although the idea that judges have a duty to be sincere or candid in their legal opinions is widely shared, critics have argued that a strong presumption in favor of candor threatens judicial legitimacy, deters positive strategic action on multi-member courts, reduces the clarity and coherence of doctrine, erodes collegiality, and promotes the proliferation of fractured opinions. Against these and other objections, I defend the view that judges have a duty to give sincere public justifications for their legal decisions. After distinguishing the concepts of sincerity and candor, I argue that the values of legal justification and publicity support a principle of judicial sincerity. This principle imposes weaker constraints than a general duty of judicial candor. But while candor may be desirable, judges who provide sincere justifications for their decisions satisfy the demands of legitimate adjudication.