Late last week President Obama announced a three-year moratorium on new coal leases on federal land. The moratorium was effected by an order from the pen of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, and it has already come under attack by congressional Republicans (I know! I was shocked, too). Several days ago, I wrote some introductory comments […]

Those of you who look for interesting news headlines buried in your Friday news feeds will have found quite an interesting little nugget on the front end of this MLK weekend. The Obama administration made good on a State of the Union hint and announced that it is initiating a moratorium on new coal leases […]

I’m sure that readers of the Yale Journal of Regulation (and its blog) have by now realized that the Journal’s central subject is under sustained attack. Ben Carson, during last week’s debate among the GOP presidential contenders, had this to say about regulation: And — and — you know, it goes back to the whole […]

I’ve previously written here about some of the craziness surrounding Yucca Mountain, the once-and-future federal nuclear waste repository in Nye County, Nevada. That was the better part of a year ago, and it’s time for an update. First, a brief refresher. Since about the 1960s, nuclear power has been a substantial piece of the electricity […]

Ok, I confess that the title to this post is a bit grandiose. At a minimum, we’ll have much more material on which to base our prognostications about the legality of the Clean Power Plan after Michigan v. EPA is decided on Friday or Monday. But I can’t resist accepting Chris Walker’s invitation to think for just […]

As Andy Hessick noted a few posts back, the Supreme Court recently granted cert in an important energy law case. FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association deals with FERC’s attempt to create a demand response program at the wholesale level. This is an issue that I’ve blogged about before; other scholars have written some great […]

Even if you are an armchair observer of the federal courts, or a nuclear policy nerd, it’s unlikely that you caught wind of a mid-April decision out of the Court of Federal Claims in the case of System Fuels, Inc. v. United States (decided Apr. 15, 2015). In fact, even if you had, you’d be […]

Welcome back. In my previous post, I struck up a conversation with—well, with an italicized version of myself. It’s a conversation about the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which is a really Big Deal. Yeah, you said that last time, but I’m still not clear why it’s such a Big Deal. You left off by saying […]

Step aside, Affordable Care Act. If you aren’t already, get used to hearing about the Clean Power Plan. Perhaps the most ambitious regulatory effort ever put forward by the EPA, the Plan represents the largest, farthest-reaching component of the Obama Administration’s response to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. So far, we’ve only seen […]

It’s worth taking some time here to note the passing in January of one of the great scholars of regulation and public policy, Martha Derthick (emerita of the University of Virginia Department of Politics). Nice remembrances can be found here, here, and here . Derthick’s work roamed widely through American politics, but of particular relevance […]

I’ve been exploring a few issues in energy regulation that Congress is likely to take up this term. Up today: FERC’s efforts to promote demand response in wholesale electricity markets. What is “demand response”? It’s the umbrella term for programs that urge customers to turn off the lights when demand for electricity is extremely high. […]

This is the second part of a discussion about the relationship between FERC and EPA. In Part 1, I explained that Congress has generally written its environmental statutes without regard for its energy statutes, and vice versa. Recent environmental regulatory activity—in particular, two massive initiatives announced by EPA in 2014—has heightened concerns that EPA and […]

I’m exploring a few issues in energy regulation that are likely to attract the attention of the 114th United States Congress. My previous post discussed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regulation of high-level nuclear waste management; in this post, I want to take a look at the relationship between FERC and EPA and how some recent regulatory […]

I’m very happy to join the other contributors to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment Blog. I am an Associate Professor of Law at Notre Dame, and my research is principally in the areas of environmental and energy regulation, property law, and natural resource management. In several upcoming posts, I hope to explore […]