About
James Coleman is a Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. His scholarship addresses regulation of international energy companies, focusing on how countries account for and influence regulation in their trading partners. Courses taught by Professor Coleman include Oil & Gas, Energy Law, Corporations, Energy Management, Regulatory Theory, International Energy Development, Energy Transport & Trade, and International Petroleum Transactions.
Professor Coleman’s research focuses on how to respond to increased scrutiny of investment in energy production and transport, including pipelines, power transmission, and liquefied natural gas. He examines regulation of imported fuel and electricity that is based on how it was produced elsewhere, a mode of regulation that is becoming increasingly common in many forms including low carbon fuel standards and environmental assessments of energy transport projects. Finally, Professor Coleman analyzes how global energy companies respond to competing pressures from investors and regulators in multiple jurisdictions employing different corporate law standards.
Some of his recent pieces on these topics include:
- State Energy Cartels, 42 CARDOZO L. REV. __ (forthcoming 2021).
- The New Oil & Gas Governance (with Tara Righetti & Hannah Wiseman), 130 YALE L.J.F. 51 (2020).
- The Third Age of Oil & Gas Law,” 95 IND. L.J. 389 (2020).
- Energy and Eminent Domain (with Alexandra B. Klass), 104 MINN. L. REV. 659 (2019).
- Pipelines & Power-Lines: Building the Energy Transport Future,” 79 OH. ST. L.J. 263 (2019)
- Beyond the Pipeline Wars, 2018 UT. L. REV. 119 (2018).
- Policymaking by Proposal, 24 GEO. MASON L. REV. 497 (2017).
- “How Cheap Is Corporate Talk? Comparing Companies’ Comments on Regulations with Their Securities Disclosures, 40 HARV. ENVTL. REV. 47 (2016).
Professor Coleman is also a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is frequently published and quoted in the popular press, including in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Forbes, Fox News, The Dallas Morning News, The Hill, The Houston Chronicle, and The Washington Post. He has testified before Congress on methods of streamlining energy infrastructure approvals.
Professor Coleman comes to SMU from the University of Calgary where he was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Haskayne School of Business. He also served the provincial government as an energy law expert on the Alberta Royalty Review, which reformed and modernized management of Alberta’s vast oil and gas resources. Before that he served on the faculty at Harvard Law School as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in Biology, magna cum laude with highest honors in field, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, cum laude. After law school, Professor Coleman clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and practiced energy, environmental, and appellate law at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington D.C.
Scholarship for Download: http://bit.ly/JWCScholarship
SSRN: http://bit.ly/JamesColemanSSRN
SMU Dedman School of Law Profile: https://www.smu.edu/Law/Faculty/Profiles/Coleman-James-W
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/energylawprof
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EnergyLawProf
Energy Tradeoffs Website: EnergyTradeoffs.com