Donald N. Zillman

2014: An eventful year for energy law and policy

This article reviews some of the fascinating events in energy law and policy that occurred during 2014. It does so through the eyes of the Academic Advisory Group to the International Bar Associations Section on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law. The Group prepared The Law of Energy Underground for Oxford University Press publication in early 2014. The book studied many developments in energy law and policy, including shale oil and gas development, geothermal resource development, and subsurface storage and disposal development. This article reviews some of those developments and then expands with others that have emerged since Energy Underground went to press. These new developments pertain to the geopolitics of energy, debates over climate change, judicial regulation of unconventional oil and gas development, and the future of nuclear energy and nuclear waste.

Evolution of Modern Energy Law: a Personal Retrospective

Some of the major events of the last 40 years that have shaped energy law and policy in the United States and worldwide are reviewed in this article. Among topics noted are the conflicts over Middle East oil, the shift from state control to free-market economics in the US and the UK, and the growing significance of climate change and its implications for energy.

Innovative Regulation for Energy and Resources

The authors examine recent changes in United States regulation of energy and natural resources with attention to both the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the variety of regulatory changes in major federal agencies, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Even the events of the second Bush Administration remind us that need for government control has struggled with a desire for market decisions to govern the use of energy and resources. While ‘command and control’ regulation has become decidedly less fashionable, more collaborative regulation will still call for the assertion of public objectives in the operation of the energy and natural resources industries.

The American Approach to Defamation

Defamation has long fascinated citizens of the English-speaking world. To the layman the fascination is due to the often sensational nature of the cases. It is hard to be bored by the legal resolution of charges that a high government official has taken bribes from criminal figures or that a celebrity has engaged in sexual misbehavior. For the lawyer defamation raises the fundamental tension between two major values the freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. The civil liberties aspect of a defamation case is not the contest between the powerful government on one side and the individual dissident on the other. Both expression and reputation are of value to the individual and to society as a whole. In Spring 1979, I had the good fortune to lecture on defamation law at the University of Southampton as an exchange faculty member from the United States. My task was to learn British defamation law and then introduce the students to defamation American style in particular, the constitutional treatment of large portions of American defamation law. Fortunately the combination of student courtesy and tolerance, the inherent fascination of the legal doctrines, and student sympathy with