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33 Yale J. Reg. Online 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/jregb33 and id is 1 raw text is: 

Yale Journal on Regulation Online


                   Iterative Energy Policy: Resisting An Apology

                                   Book Review
Steve Isser, Electricity Restructuring in the United States: Markets and Policy from
         the 1978 Energy Act to the Present (Cambridge Univ. Press 2015)

                                 Emily Hammond*

       Most energy law scholars have a general sense of the piecemeal fashion in which
energy law and policy have unfolded in the past several decades. Notwithstanding the
lack of a unifying policy, markets have opened, for both natural gas and electricity;
environmental policy has become increasingly intertwined with the energy sector; and
natural gas prices matter.1 The laws and policies ushering in these developments can be
lined up against presidential administrations, economic crises, and major domestic and
world events. Indeed, that context aids tremendously in understanding contemporary
energy law, and it has become part standard fare, part lore for energy law aficionados.2

       In Steve Isser's Electricity Restructuring in the United States,3 readers will find a
rich resource that delves deeply into the story of energy law's evolution. The book
covers the particulars of nearly every development in U.S. energy law and policy related
to electricity restructuring from 1978 until about 2014. It documents the kinds of details




* Associate Dean for Public Engagement and Professor of Law, the George Washington
University Law School. The author thanks Joel Eisen, Rob Glicksman, and Dick Pierce
for their helpful comments.
1 See JOEL B. EISEN ET AL., ENERGY, ECONOMICS AND THE ENVIRONMENT 6-8 (4th ed.
2015) (briefly describing eras of energy law).
2 See, e.g., id. at 8 ([S]everal distinct themes recur throughout the history of energy law.
... history often repeats itself.); William Boyd, Public Utility and the Lowe-Carbon
Future, 61 UCLA L. REV. 1614, 1635-36 (2014) (describing changing conceptions of the
public utility); Emily Hammond & David B. Spence, The Regulatory Contract in the
Marketplace, - VAND. L. REV. - (forthcoming 2016), http://ssm.com/abstract=2584619
(providing overview of changes in markets and environmental policy since late-1970s);
Alexandra B. Klass & Elizabeth J. Wilson, Interstate Transmission Challenges for
Renewable Energy: A Federalism Mismatch, 65 VAND. L. REV. 1801, 1814-21 (2012)
(describing history of federal authority over transmission); Richard J. Pierce, The Past,
Present, and Future of Energy Regulation, 31 UTAH ENVTL. L. REV. 291 (2011)
(describing major developments in energy law and critiquing policy options for the
future); Jim Rossi, The Political Economy of Energy and Its Implications for Climate
Change Legislation, 84 TULANE L. REV. 379 (2009) (describing how public choice theory
and federalism policy in energy sphere relate to political economy of climate change
legislation).
3 STEVE ISSER, ELECTRICITY RESTRUCTURING IN THE UNITED STATES: MARKETS AND
POLICY FROM THE 1978 ENERGY ACT TO THE PRESENT (2015).


Vol. 33: 1, 2015

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