Private Law or Social Norms? The Use of Restrictive Covenants in Beaver Hills

This Note provides a detailed history of the use of restrictive covenants in Beaver Hills, a planned residential subdivision built in New Haven between 19o8 and the end of the 1930s. It analyzes these covenants in light of both the relevant common law of servitudes and the contemporary evolution of public land use regulation, most notably zoning. These analyses reveal that restrictive covenants in this era are best understood as a form of signaling and social norms rather than as a form of private law. AUTHOR. Yale Law School, J.D. expected 2007; Columbia University, M.A. 2004; Harvard College, B.A. 1999. The author would like to thank Richard Brooks, Robert Ellickson, David Lenzi, and Henry Smith for their invaluable assistance with this Note.