North Dakota Law Review holds Energy Law Symposium on November 3, 2011
The North Dakota Law Review presented a special symposium featuring energy law topics. The Symposium was held on November 3, 2011 with all events taking place in the Baker Courtroom on third floor of the UND School of Law. The Symposium was free and open to the public. In addition, it has been approved for 4 hours of CLE credit in North Dakota and 3.75 hours of CLE credit in Minnesota.
UND School of Law thanks Crowley Fleck for its Oil, Gas & Energy Law Fund to Support Programs Related to North Dakota's Energy Law and Policy — Thank You for Making a Difference at UND School of Law!
Symposium Schedule
Welcome
Kathryn Rand, Dean, UND School of Law
Intro to the Energy Law Symposium - view video
Hydraulic Fracturing in North Dakota - view video
- Professor Joshua Fershee - download powerpoint
Moderator: Nate Martindale
Presentation followed by 15 minutes of Q & A
Practicing Energy Law in North Dakota- view video
- Brian Bjella - download pdf document
- Joshua Swanson
Moderator: Rob Carolin – Alumni Relations
Presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q & A
New Energy Development - view video
- Marcilynn Burke
Moderator: Lindsay Harris
Presentation followed by 15 minutes of Q & A
Energy Extraction on Federal and Native American Land - view video
- Professor LeRoy Paddock - download powerpoint
- Professor Raymond Cross
Moderator: Joshua Fershee – Associate Dean
Presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q & A
Environmental Protections on Energy Extraction- view video
- Heather Ash - download powerpoint
- Professor John Nagle - download powerpoint
Moderator: Dr. Steve Benson – Director of Petroleum Eng. Dept., UND
Presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q & A
Presenter Bios
Associate Dean Joshua Fershee
University of North Dakota School of Law
Joshua P. Fershee joined the UND Law School faculty in 2007, where he serves as Associate Professor of Law & Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Research. He teaches Business Associations I & II, Energy Law & Policy, and Labor & Employment Law. His research and scholarship focus on a comprehensive scope of energy and energy-related law and policy, as well as the role of law and regulation as they impact business and corporate governance issues. Fershee's recent articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including the Harvard Journal on Legislation, Energy Law Journal, Connecticut Law Review, and Environmental Law. He contributed the Energy Subsidies section to the Encyclopedia of Sustainability and the chapter on Renewables Mandates and Goals in The Law of Clean Energy, a book published by the American Bar Association. He received his JD magna cum laude from Tulane Law School, where he was elected Order of the Coif and editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review.
Brian Bjella, Esquire
Crowley Fleck
Brian is a Partner in the Energy, Environment & Natural Resources Department. He joined the firm in 2009 after practicing with Fleck, Mather & Strutz, Ltd., in Bismarck, North Dakota since 1980. His primary areas of practice are natural resources, public utilities and government relations law. Prior to joining the firm, he served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of North Dakota, representing the Board of University and School Lands.
A significant portion of Brian's practice involves representing energy clients in permitting facilities before the North Dakota Public Service Commission. He has extensive experience in preparation of mineral title opinions. Brian has litigated contract and property law issues before state and federal courts. He also has represented clients in lobbying activities before the North Dakota legislature.
Brian is a board member and treasurer of the Lignite Energy Council, a coal industry trade association. He has been very active in the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, serving on the Special Institutes Committee and as chair of the Long Range Planning Committee, several program committees and presenting papers at annual or special institutes. He has twice been elected a trustee of the Foundation.
Joshua Swanson, Esquire
Vogel Law Firm
Joshua's practice is centered primarily on litigation where he focuses on energy and natural resource law, commercial litigation, and plaintiff's law.
Before joining the firm, Joshua served as a law clerk to the seven judges of North Dakota's Northwest Judicial District based in Minot and Williston. Prior to that, during law school, he clerked at one of Omaha, Nebraska's largest corporate and estate planning law firms.
A proud native of Maddock, North Dakota, Joshua resides in Fargo. He graduated magna cum laude as one of the McGrath north scholarship recipients from the Creighton university School of Law where he was lead articles editor for the law review, a member of the school's traveling trademark moot court team, vice president of the moot court board, a member of the client counseling and negotiation board, and president of his legal fraternity. Joshua received undergraduate degrees in political science and history, with honors, from North Dakota State University.
Joshua is a passionate North Dakota State University Bison fan, serving on the NDSU Team Makers Board of Directors and the NDSU English Department External Advisory Board. He also writes a column for BisonIllustrated magazine and is an advisor of the NDSU Blue Key student group. In addition, Joshua teaches Government Regulations in the Energy Industry at Bismarck State's National Energy Center of Excellence.
Professor Marcilynn Burke
Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Dept. of the Interior University of Houston Law Center (on leave)
The New Energy Frontier
Marcilynn A. Burke was designated by President Barack Obama as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management (ASLM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior on July 29, 2011.
Before becoming the Acting ASLM, Burke served as the BLM's Deputy Director for Programs and Policy. To serve in these positions in the Department, she has taken a leave of absence from the University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) in Texas, where she is an Associate Professor of Law. At UHLC she teaches courses in property law, land use law, and laws governing the management of Federal lands/natural resources. Her research highlights the socio-economic impacts of those laws on private property.
At UHLC Burke also served as one of the co-directors for UHLC's Center for Environment, Energy and Natural Resources. Before joining the faculty at UHLC, she served as a visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., and subsequently, at the Seattle University School of Law for its "Summer in Alaska" program. In the Summer in Alaska program, Burke taught a courses in natural resources law with an emphasis on Alaska's unique resources and impacts to Native Alaskans. Burke previously practiced law with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington, D.C. At the firm she focused on environmental law, antitrust, and civil and criminal litigation. Upon graduation from law school, she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Burke received her bachelor's degree in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She obtained her law degree from Yale Law School, where she was an editor for both the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and the Yale Journal of International Law.
Professor LeRoy Paddock
George Washington University Law School
Minimizing Land Use Disputes in Energy Facility Siting: Role of Landscape Conservation Cooperation and National Heritage Inventories
LeRoy C. (Lee) Paddock is Associate Dean for Environmental Law Studies at The George Washington University Law School. His work focuses on environmental compliance and enforcement, environmental governance with particular emphasis on integrating the regulatory system with economic and values-based drivers of environmental behavior, environmental justice, public participation, and energy law issues related to renew sources and efficiency. He is a member of the Council of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources.
Lee holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. with High Honors from the University of Iowa. He clerked for Judge Donald Lay of the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Professor Raymond Cross
University of Montana School of Law
Professor Cross teaches Federal Indian Law, Advanced Federal Indian Law, American Cultural and Religious Freedoms, and Public Land and Natural Resources Law. He also co-advises the Public Land & Resources Law Review, and he coaches the National Native American law Students' Moot Court team that placed second nationally in 2004. He works extensively with Indian tribes, Indian organizations, and federal agencies on issues of Indian education, tribal self-determination, and cultural and natural resources preservation.
Professor Raymond Cross' legal career in Indian Country is chronicled in a new book entitled "Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes and the Trial That Forged A Nation" (Little, Brown Publishing Co. 2004). He began his legal career as a staff attorney with California Indian Legal Services (C.I.L.S.) in its Mendocino County office located in Ukiah, California. He later served from 1975-80 as the Indian Law Support Center Director for Native American Rights Fund (NARF), a public interest law firm located in Boulder, Colorado.
Professor Cross returned in 1981 to serve as tribal attorney for his tribal people, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. During his tenure as tribal attorney he presented two oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court onbehalf of his tribal people, resulting in two Indian law opinions that opened state courts to tribal damage actions against non-Indian defendants and that re-affirmed fundamental principles of tribal sovereign immunity to suit. He also represented his tribal people in their long standing just compensation claim against the United States for its 1949 taking of over 156,000 acres of reservation land as the site for the Garrison Dam, the world's fourth largest rolled earth dam. In 1992, Congress awarded the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation over $149.2 million in just compensation for wrongs imposed on the tribal people by the Garrison Dam. Professor Cross is a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School
Heather Ash
University of North Dakota School of Law
Heather Ash is a third-year law student and serves as Case Comment Editor of the North Dakota Law Review. Heather grew up in Fort Frances, Ontario and graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2005 with a Bachelor's Degree in Kinesiology. Heather spent four years as a member of the University of Manitoba women's hockey team and during that time certified as both an Exercise Physiologist and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. After working for the Canadian Armed Forces as a Physical Exercise Specialist for four years, Heather began her legal studies at the University of North Dakota School of Law in 2009. In the spring of 2011 Heather's Law Review note on Hydraulic Fracturing was chosen for publication and won the North Dakota Bar Foundation's Outstanding Note Award. Heather is currently completing an externship at the Grand Forks Public Defenders Office and will graduate in December of this year.
Professor John Nagle
University of Notre Dame School of Law
John Copeland Nagle is the John N. Mathews Chair at the Notre Dame Law School, where he teaches legislation, property, and a variety of environmental law courses. He is the co-author of three casebooks: "The Practice and Policy of Environmental Law," "Property: Cases and Materials," and "The Law of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management." His book "Law's Environment: How the Law Affects the Environment," was published by the Yale University Press in 2010. He also writes about the relationship between environmental pollution, cultural pollution, and other kinds of "pollution," and about how religious teachings influence environmental law.
Prior to joining the Notre Dame faculty, Professor Nagle was an associate professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law from 1994 through 1998. He also worked in the United States Department of Justice, first as an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel where he advised other executive branch agencies on a variety of constitutional and statutory issues, and later as a trial attorney conducting environmental litigation. Professor Nagle served as a law clerk to Judge Deanell Reece Tacha of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and he was a scientific assistant in the Energy and Environmental Systems Division of Argonne National Laboratory. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the University of Michigan Law School.
Professor Nagle has participated in numerous activities outside of the law school. He has served as a member of the executive committee of the Section on Legislation of the American Association of Law Schools, and as a vice chair on the Endangered Species Committee of the American Bar Association's environmental section, and he helps organize the annual meeting of the Law Professors' Christian Fellowship.