Biography

I am an Emmett-Frankel Fellow at UCLA School of Law specializing in energy law, environmental law, and antitrust. My scholarship investigates grid governance, public utility regulation, and the challenges of controlling regulated monopolies. I am thrilled to be working through tomorrow's energy questions, like:

How can data centers join the grid without harming ratepayers?
How do we accelerate grid construction to meet our climate goals?
Can distributed energy networks upend traditional utility models?
How do we maintain competition in the energy markets?
Can utility regulation be applied to a future AGI monopoly?
Should we nationalize the grid?
Will data center compute become a commodity that requires public provision?
How do we build a wildfire-resilient grid without raising costs?

Scholarly Papers

Job Market Paper

The New Vertically Integrated Utility

This Article argues that acquisitions joining rate-regulated utilities with downstream large-load customers, such as data centers, create opportunities for non-price discrimination through service prioritization, procurement decisions, and risk-shifting that existing utility regulation and antitrust doctrine are poorly equipped to police.

Forthcoming Article

Lessons from a National Transmission Planner

Forthcoming in 44 UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy (2026)

This Article examines the governance of regional transmission organizations and explores how flaws in national transmission planning authorities can paradoxically entrench incumbent utility interests, drawing lessons from Japan's OCCTO.

Forthcoming Article

Utility Filing Rights and the Grid’s Governance Problem

Forthcoming in 136 Yale Law Journal (2027) (with Joshua C. Macey)

This Article argues that governance failures of the electric grid trace to Section 205(c) of the Federal Power Act, which grants utilities exclusive agenda-setting filing rights to propose rate and regulatory changes that protect their investments and erect barriers to entry.

Published Article

Towards a National Transmission Planning Authority

49 Harvard Environmental Law Review (2025) (with Joshua C. Macey)

This Article explains how the electric grid’s unusual governance structure enables incumbent utilities to slow the transition to cleaner generation by letting them overinvest in inefficient, local projects. The article proposes solutions state and federal regulators could implement using existing statutory authority.

Published Article

Taking Psychology Seriously: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Robert Sugden’s Opportunity Criterion

32 Journal of Economic Methodology (2025)

This Article argues that Robert Sugden’s opportunity criterion does not go far enough in integrating insights from psychological science, drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to demonstrate that meaningful agency requires developing individual agentic capabilities alongside choice opportunities.

Published Article

Opportunity, Not Welfare: How Behavioral Insights Should Lead to a Reorientation of the Normative Foundation in Law and Economics

142 Journal of Contextual Economics (2022)

This Article pushes back on the standard efficiency-maximizing normative framework in law and economics, arguing that behavioral insights suggest a normative program faces serious challenges from recent behavioral insights that push back against the assumption of stable, context-independent preferences common in preferentialist welfare analysis.

Policy Papers & Briefs

Policy Brief

The Price of Resilience: Understanding Wildfire Cost Allocation in the Transmission Context

Published by the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment (2026)

A policy brief exploring the ways transmission costs are impacted by the rising threat of wildfires, and offering suggestions for harmonizing cost recovery and socializing infrastructure investment costs.

Policy Brief

Non-Pipeline Alternatives to Accelerate California's Gas Transition

Published by the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment (2026)

A policy brief describing the potential of non-pipeline alternatives to accelerate California's transition away from natural gas, without unduly raising rates for ratepayers. The brief evaluates AB 2313, a proposed non-pipeline alternatives bill, and offers recommendations for its implementation.

Policy Brief

A Roadmap for Zonal Decarbonization in California

Published by the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment (2026)

A policy brief exploring the legal and practical hurdles facing California's zonal decarbonization bill, SB 1221.