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Panel Discussion: New Controversies in Energy Law
by
Wed, Mar 4, 2026
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM EST (GMT-5)
Online Event
6
Registered
Details
Speakers
Brian G. Slocum
Stearns Weaver Miller Professor
Brian G. Slocum joined the FSU College of Law faculty during the summer of 2023, and he will teach Language and Legal Interpretation in the fall. Slocum’s research and teaching experience lie in legislation/statutory interpretation, language and law, administrative law, and contracts. He comes to FSU Law from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, where he held the titles of distinguished professor of law and associate dean for scholarship. He has also served as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and University of California Davis School of Law. Slocum has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship.
Slocum is the author of “Ordinary Meaning: A Theory of the Most Fundamental Principle of Legal Interpretation" (University of Chicago Press 2015), the editor of "Inference, Intention and 'Ordinary Meaning': What jurists can learn about legal interpretation from linguistics and philosophy" (University of Chicago Press 2017), and a co-editor of “Justice Scalia: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law” (University of Chicago Press 2019). He also has published numerous articles in top law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, and New York University Law Review. Prior to entering academia, Slocum worked at the U.S. Department of Justice and clerked for the Honorable Frank Magill, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Shelley Welton
Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Shelley Welton is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where she holds an affiliation with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy in the Weitzman School as part of President Amy Gutmann’s 2019 commitment to build a multidisciplinary energy policy faculty affiliated with the Kleinman Center.
At the Law School, Welton teaches environmental law and a climate change law seminar. She also teaches “Introduction to Energy Policy,” a university-wide graduate course, for the Kleinman Center on Energy Policy.
Welton comes to Penn from the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she taught administrative law, energy law, environmental law and policy, environmental justice, and climate change law. Her scholarship has appeared in publications including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review.
Prior to academia, Welton worked as the deputy director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She also clerked for the Honorable David Trager of the Eastern District of New York and the Honorable Allyson Duncan of the Fourth Circuit. She received her PhD in law from Yale Law, her JD from NYU School of Law, a Master of Public Administration in environmental science and policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
James Coleman
Energy Law Scholar and Professor of Law
University of Minnesota Law School
Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.
Professor Coleman often writes interdisciplinary papers focused on addressing crucial policy questions and his research is frequently presented before key legal decision-makers in Washington, D.C., and across North America. He has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.
Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
Mark B. Seidenfeld
Patricia A. Dore Professor of Administrative Law
Florida State University College of Law
Mark Seidenfeld, the Patricia A. Dore Professor of Administrative Law, is one of the country’s leading scholars on federal administrative law and author of one the most cited administrative law articles: “A Civic Republican Justification for the Bureaucratic State,” (Harvard Law Review). Professor Seidenfeld focuses on how administrative law might be structured to facilitate agencies implementing deliberative democracy, with special attention to the law’s effect on the behavior and accountability of government institutions. He also has written about issues of constitutional law and legislation that bear on the interactions between the president, the executive branch generally, Congress and the courts. He has taught Administrative Law, Constitutional Law (Structure of Government), Legislation & Regulation, various courses on particular areas of regulation, including Regulation of Electric Power, Health Law & Policy, and Environmental Law, and Law & Economics. In addition, Professor Seidenfeld has served as associate dean for academic affairs and as associate dean for research at the FSU College of Law. He has been on the law faculty since 1987. He also has actively participated in the American Bar Association Section on Administrative and Regulatory Law, as a chair or member of several section committees.
Prior to entering the legal academy, Professor Seidenfeld clerked for Judge Patricia A. Wald of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and served as assistant counsel for the New York State Public Service Commission. Professor Seidenfeld holds a J.D. from Stanford University, where he was a senior law review editor and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He also has an M.A. in theoretical physics from Brandeis University and a B.A. in physics from Reed College. In his career before law school, Professor Seidenfeld worked as a research physicist and engineer at Intel, Inc., and is a co-holder of a patent for the process Intel used to manufacture the 80286 microprocessor.