Professor Joshua Macey, an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will join the Wallace Stegner as the 20th Annual Young Scholar on November 7, 2024.
Professor Macy’s Lecture, "Regulating Public Utilities," will address the legal and economic challenges to regulating public utilities. As the clean energy transition transforms the nation, Macy’s talk could not be more timely. He will argue that regulators and policymakers should apply principles from financial regulation to the regulation of electric utilities.
Joshua Macey is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches and writes about bankruptcy, environmental law, energy law, and the regulation of financial institutions. Professor Macey’s latest work focuses on the fragility of the nation’s electric grid and offers strategies to improve grid reliability and accelerate the transition to new sources of energy.
In 2023, the American Bankruptcy Institute named Macey to its list of 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders in Insolvency Practice. Professor Macey has also won the Morrison Prize — awarded to the “most impactful sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North America during the previous year” — for three consecutive years (given, respectively, for “Zombie Energy Laws,” 73 Vanderbilt Law Review; “Long Live the Federal Power Act’s Bright Line,” 134 Harvard Law Review; and “Clean Energy Through Grid Reliability,” 74 Stanford Law Review).
Asked about his upcoming visit to the Wallace Stegner Center, Professor Macey said, “I’m delighted and grateful for the opportunity to present my work at the Stegner Center and to the University of Utah law faculty. I have the utmost respect for the faculty here, as well as for the previous recipients of this award. Much of my formative experiences thinking about our stewardship of the environment first came when I encountered Wallace Stegner’s work, so it is a special privilege for me to receive this award.”
Lincoln Davies, Stegner Center Co-Director, Executive Director for Energy, Resource, and Environment Programs, and Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, noted that the Stegner Center looks forward to welcoming Joshua Macey as the 20th annual young scholar. “The energy problems we face today are some of society’s most pressing challenges. Professor Macey is one of the brightest minds working in energy law and policy today. It is a pleasure to welcome him to campus, carrying on the long tradition of Stegner Center Young Scholars doing impactful work to better our world.”
Professor Macey’s Young Scholar presentation on “Regulating Public Utilities” will be published in the environmental and natural resources law issue of the student-edited Utah Law Review.
The Young Scholars Program, which is made possible by the generous support of the Cultural Vision Fund, is designed to recognize and establish a relationship with promising scholars early in their academic careers. Recipients are selected based on their accomplishments, the quality of their academic work, and their promise in the field of environmental and natural resources law and policy.
Past Stegner Center Young Scholars include, among others, Vanessa Casado Perez, Professor and Dean’s Research Chair at Texas A&M School of Law; Professor Karen Bradshaw of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University; Professor Dave Owen, UC Hastings College of Law; and Professor Emily Hammond, George Washington University Law School. A full list of young scholars is posted online here.