Energy Law - United States

United States

See also: Oil and gas law in the United States and Energy policy of the United States

This section concerns the law of the United States, as well as the states that are the most populous or largest producers of energy.

In the United States, energy is regulated extensively through the United States Department of Energy, as well as state regulatory agencies.

Every state, the Federal government, and the District of Columbia collect some motor vehicle excise taxes. Specifically, these are excise taxes on gasoline, diesel fuel, and gasohol. While many states in the western U.S.A. rely to a great deal on "extraction taxes" for revenue, most states get a relatively small amount of their revenue from such sources.

The practice of energy law has been the domain of law firms working on behalf of utility companies, rather than legal scholars or other legal actors (such as private lawyers and paralegals), especially in Texas, but this is changing. Some officials from energy agencies may take jobs in the utilities or other companies they regulate, such as the former FERC chairman did in 2008.

The American Bar Association (ABA) has a Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources, which is a "forum for lawyers working in areas related to environmental law, natural resources law, and energy law." The Section houses several substantive committees on environmental and energy law that release current information on topics of interest to practitioners and news of committee activities. The ABA recognized 'environmental and energy law' as one of the practice areas where legal work may be found in 2009.

Read more about this topic:  Energy Law

Famous quotes related to united states:

    “When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—’indoctrination’ we might say—exercised through the mass media.”
    —Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    “Hollywood ... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.”
    —Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    “I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
    —Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)