Costs and Benefits of Pollution Control in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, 1840–1906

Abstract

Judges in Pennsylvania saw the costs and benefits of protecting people from industrial pollution quite differently from judges in New York and New Jersey between 1840 and 1906. Not only did they invoke balancing doctrine more than did judges in New York and New Jersey; but when costs and benefits were considered, Pennsylvania judges almost always concluded that the price of pollution abatement was too high to justify enjoining polluting industries. New York and New Jersey judges commonly did the reverse, acknowledging great social value and little cost to making businesses alleviate pollution. Judicial interpretation of the notions of cost and benefit mirrored the political, economic, and social conditions in each state, conditions that differed across time and place.

• balancing doctrine
• cost‐benefit analysis
• nuisance case law
• pollution
• social structure
• state courts

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christine Meisner Rosen

Dr. Rosen is an associate professor of business and public policy at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720.