LAW-2678 Energy and Natural Resources
Energy has been the motive technological force driving civilization from the early invention of the wheel allowing use of animal power, to pre-industrial use of wind and water power. Coal and the steam engines created the industrial era starting 175 years ago, petroleum is the foundation of 20th century industrialized society, and electricity is the often unappreciated current driver of our information society, computers, air conditioning, and even making possible high-rise city design. Advances traditionally used energy derived from exploiting natural resources. The societal environmental "cost" of our patterns of energy use is significant pollution, congestion, and climate changing global warming. Now, renewable energy options are advancing rapidly causing significant new additional challenges. Energy is the most legally regulated industry in the U.S. and in much of the world. Energy and its production, sale, and use are very significantly regulated at the federal, state, and local levels. One-third of the states, including almost every major state in the U.S. and all Northeastern states, have relatively recently deregulated and made competitive the once monopoly electric utility/energy business that is the foundation of the U.S. economy. This course will immerse students in the real-world legal work that energy lawyers do in shaping the current world system. We will use real-world simulation/problem-solving modules in which students will participate in class to examine how, by whom and at what levels energy, and the technologies it creates, are regulated, what lawyers actually do with various private clients or with government agencies, and the legal implications of working in a major sector of the U.S./world economy during a time of its current level of regulation and deregulation. The class will examine the issues above, as well as the recent collapse of the deregulated California energy market. After understanding the legal Constitutional issues and foundation of energy regulation, the class will split into three opposed legal teams in a month-long class simulation of a real Massachusetts legal confrontation where a local community near Boston utilized local legal tools to attempt to stop and evict a renewable power project from locating within its borders. In lieu of an exam, students will complete a paper on an energy, environmental, land-use or related legal topic of their choosing, which can satisfy the writing requirement, and this course also satisfies the experiential course and administrative law distribution requirements.