Regulation, Power, and the Public Interest: An Exploratory Study

• Semester: Spring 2025
• Course ID: 196W
• Credit Hours: 1
• Unique: 29395

Description

In this 1 credit, seminar-styled class, we will explore the various legal approaches used to hold network industries accountable for providing public services, such as energy, telecommunications, and drinking water services. Some of these service providers are government-owned, and some are private companies (including public utilities). We tend to think of many of them as providers of essential or critically important services. After discussing some of the conceptual and theoretical writings on institutional challenges relating to the regulation of these powerful actors, we will explore a number of different areas of regulation, including the regulatory oversight of drinking water supplies, chemical manufacture, electric utilities, oil and gas, telecommunications, and e-commerce companies like Amazon.  The structure of the seminar and readings will be established by the professor, but the fifty-minute hourly discussions will be led by student teams that rotate on a weekly basis.  The final grade will be based on the quality of the student’s participation throughout the semester; the quality of the specific classes led by the student; five short blog posts on the weekly readings; and a ten-page paper (double-spaced).