Jim Rossi

Jim Rossi is a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School who specializes in Energy Law and Administrative Law. He formerly was a professor at Florida State University College of Law, and has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Texas School of Law. His books include Regulatory Bargaining and Public Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), along with New Frontiers of State Constitutional Law: Dual Enforcement of Norms (Oxford University Press 2010) (with James Gardner) and Energy, Economics and the Environment (Third Edition, Foundation Press 2010) (with Fred Bosselman, Joel Eisen, David Spence and Jacqueline Weaver).

Professor Rossi has studied how the economic and regulatory structure of the electric utility industry presents limits to national climate change legislation, as well as legal and economic barriers to transmission infrastructure to serve new renewable power projects. His work evaluates the judicial role in monitoring deregulated industries, such as electric power, and also addresses federalism and other constitutional aspects related to reform of the energy industry.

His administrative law scholarship examines participation and judicial review in administrative law, and state administrative procedure and constitutional law. An article he coauthored with Professor Jody Freeman inspired a study and policy recommendations on agency coordination adopted by the Administrative Conference of the U.S. in 2012. Professor Rossi has critically assessed the growth of mass participation in the administrative state and has defended the role of courts to engaging in "reasonableness" review of agency decisions without limiting the constitutional authority of federal agencies. He also studies state constitutions and state administrative law. His work in this area focuses on the role of state separation of powers in cooperative federalism programs, and on the scope "finality" of decisions issued by state and local administrative law judges, among other issues.

He holds an LL.M. from Yale Law School, a J.D. from the University of Iowa, and a B.S. from Arizona State University.