Facilitating state policy experimentation is an oft-cited justification for the U.S. federalism system. Despite growing recognition of risk aversion, free riding, and other disincentives to state-led experimentation, the mythology of state laboratories still dominates these accounts. We propose...

The United States is on the verge of a new industrial revolution. Renewable energy could replace more than 60% of our current energy generation infrastructure in fifteen years. This change is critical, yet it risks failure. The renewable generation already built in the United States consists...

America has a long history of oil and gas extraction, but a relatively new extraction technique called slickwater hydraulic fracturing has captured the attention of the public, academics, agencies, and politicians. The newly-revived focus on domestic oil and gas — and particularly on...

The United States is in the midst of a boom in natural gas and oil production, much of which has occurred in shale formations around the country. As shale development has expanded — largely as a result of new horizontal drilling and “slickwater” hydraulic fracturing (fracking, fracing, or...

Renewable energy development has recently expanded in the United States, but the law has failed to keep pace with this expansion. Law perennially chases human needs, and in some respects, this is good. When law develops in response to change, it accounts for the real needs of those who work...

The partial regulatory takings movement seeks to compensate private landowners when regulations diminish their land values. This movement has grown in recent years, particularly at the state level. Scholars have focused thus far on the compensation and its effect on the regulations that...

This paper provides one of the first detailed surveys of current oil and gas and hydraulic fracturing (also called fracing, fracking, or hydrofracking) regulation. It identifies and compares the environmental laws and regulations that apply to most stages of the oil or gas development process in...

The United States faces a critical moment in environmental regulation. As tens of thousands of new unconventional, hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells spring up around the United States, we face a long-term threat of significant soil and water contamination. The current patchwork of state...

The modern administrative state recognizes only a limited set of events as triggers of needed regulatory change. Legislatures often direct agencies to act, or administrators independently write rules, when dramatic catastrophes occur or new technologies emerge. This framework ignores a simple...