The three newest faculty members to join Minnesota Law represent a variety of disciplines, yet they share a similar outlook on what brought them to the University of Minnesota: a palpable commitment to interdisciplinary work; a dedication to academic rigor, scholarship, and collegiality; and excitement about the leadership of Dean William McGeveran, including his focus on recruiting faculty with diverse perspectives.
James Coleman, Emmanuel Mauleón, and Ilan Wurman are settling into their new roles at Minnesota Law as they begin teaching and continuing their academic research, writing, and service. They also are looking forward to collaborating with other faculty at Minnesota Law and across the University, as well as building bridges to policymakers, business leaders, and local lawyers.
James Coleman
Energy law is a giant, complicated, ever-changing specialty, and James Coleman enjoys delving into every aspect of it. From regulatory matters related to clean energy transmission to geopolitical concerns, energy law unites Coleman’s interests in science, policy, and the law.
In addition to serving as a professor of law, Coleman is affiliated with the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, a meaningful opportunity for someone who has long embraced interdisciplinary approaches. He is also fulfilling his lifelong dream to be a professor and teach at the University, having grown up in Minneapolis. Coleman majored in biology and worked as a high school physics teacher. However, he realized that a policyfocused field was more his speed, and a law degree was the best route to achieve that goal.
After clerking for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, Coleman worked in private practice in environmental and appellate law. He got involved in issues related to pipeline projects and climate regulation, plus legislation and litigation. Next came a teaching fellowship at Harvard Law School, and then his first professorship at University of Calgary, where he taught in the law and business schools.
He moved from an energy-centered province to an energy-centered state, joining the faculty of Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Texas. Coleman’s book, Cases and Materials on Oil and Gas Law, along with numerous academic journal articles, cover comprehensive energy law concerns, spanning energy and eminent domain to building the energy system of the future.
Coleman has also testified before Congress about energy issues and focuses on energy policy as an American Enterprise Institute nonresident senior fellow. He just might be the only law professor in the country who has a species of butterfly named after him, thanks to undergraduate research in Kazakhstan that led to the discovery of Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.
He joins the Minnesota Law energy, natural resources, and environmental faculty at a time of program building. “It’s an exciting time to be here,” he says. “Minnesota has always been a center of energy and environmental policy, in the sense that the U is a global research university with a real strength in policy, economics, science, and engineering. It’s a great place to do interdisciplinary work in energy.”
Coleman will teach contracts, international energy development, and energy law. The latter is especially timely as energy law evolves from its traditional focus on issues related to extracting oil and gas to concentrate on energy-related infrastructure. Other emerging areas include legal concerns related to bringing various forms of energy to market — from biofuels to hydropower — plus regulations and policies surrounding electric vehicles and the development of offshore wind energy.
Coleman will serve as an advisor to students in the energy and environmental law concentration, providing guidance on courses, career opportunities in energy law, and how to demonstrate expertise in energy law to potential employers. He also will continue his own research, including a current project focused on carbon capture and storage policy across the country.
Energy initiatives can be very complicated, Coleman says. “They often are trying to get approval from a bunch of states and the federal government for pipelines and powerlines, while negotiating with private landowners and using eminent domain to build projects.”
Navigating and understanding that complexity — and the vitality of the industry — fuels Coleman’s passion for energy law. “At the end of the day, energy is what drives the economy,” he says. “So often when you want to know why one country is doing well economically and one is doing badly, it is often tied to energy.”
Emmanuel Mauleón
As a fine artist striving to make his way in New York City, Emmanuel Mauleón hadn’t planned on working in the legal world. Then protests for police reform erupted in 2014 after the deaths of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown, propelling Mauleón to channel his interest in social justice into a new career path.
Mauleón got deeply engaged in community organizing and protesting around the issue of police reform and civil rights. He saw that the law and lawyers were at the heart of holding people accountable and advocating for justice and change. Mauleón enrolled at the UCLA School of Law and immersed himself in critical race studies, policing, civil rights and liberties, and comparative and international law.
He had observed peers’ experiences with policing while growing up in the Twin Cities and during law school. This cultivated Mauleón’s interests in policing and surveillance at the nexus of race, gender, sexuality, and religion. It also prompted him to join the Brennan Center for Justice as a fellow in its Liberty and National Security Program and then the Policing Project at New York University School of Law. Mauleón researched and published articles and white papers on police efforts to counter far-right violence and extremism, emerging police technologies, and hate crimes.
After serving as a law clerk to a U.S. District Court judge, Mauleón became a teaching fellow at UCLA School of Law. There, he taught courses in race, sexuality, and the law, as well as Latin Americans and the law. In his new role as a Minnesota Law associate professor, Mauleón will teach constitutional law, criminal procedure, property law, and critical race theory while continuing his legal research and writing. Currently he is working on papers about racialized policing and white victims of police violence.
Returning to Minnesota is a welcome homecoming for Mauleón. He believes that the state is a fruitful place to research and write about criminal justice reform amidst the ongoing debates about social justice, civil rights, and policing.
“I think that everyone should have access to public safety and security that doesn’t rely on criminalizing and over-policing one aspect of the community along racial lines,” he says. “You read the Department of Justice report on the Minneapolis police and see how grave the disparities are. It’s important to make public safety work for everyone. That’s my ultimate goal.”
Since arriving on campus, Mauleón has been impressed with the shared commitment of the University and Minnesota Law faculty to interdisciplinary study and research. Professors from sociology and social psychology reached out to collaborate, and Mauleón will serve on Minnesota Law’s intellectual life committee.
Mauleón says he adores teaching and finds great satisfaction in seeing the spark of understanding when students connect with the material. In addition to teaching, Mauleón enjoys teaming with students on learning to help them hone critical analysis skills and deconstruct complex issues. “If I can help students view a problem in a different way and think about it creatively, that’s very exciting to me,” he says.
Mauleón builds on the skills he learned as an artist — that creating paintings isn’t a “one and done process.” Rather, he says, it’s iterative and builds upon the experience, critiques, and insight developed along the way. The same goes for crafting and finessing legal arguments. “It makes you challenge your starting position, having to iterate and understand that your first idea is not your best idea,” he says. “The willingness to adopt new information and change an argument is a useful skill in learning law.”
Ilan Wurman
Ilan Wurman’s path to becoming a law professor started with physics. While majoring in the discipline and government, he enjoyed dissecting thorny problems and finding creative solutions. While Wurman concluded that physics wasn’t the right career for him, he knew he wanted to continue taking fresh approaches to complex problems.
Wurman has found the same satisfaction in practicing law and academia, where he focuses on constitutional law, administrative law, the separation of powers, and federalism. An associate professor of law and the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, Wurman comes to Minnesota Law from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
A hallmark of his career is deploying an ability to present a fresh take on difficult issues, whether in court or writing. Wurman’s numerous journal articles cover distinct topics, from search and seizure law to Reconstruction-era rights. His first book is A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism; he is the author two other books on the 14th Amendment and administrative law theory.
Wurman’s next book is The Constitution of 1789: An Introduction, which will be published in time for the country’s 250th anniversary. It will cover essentials taught in constitutional law classes “with a quirky originalist perspective,” Wurman says. His other books, he likes to joke, have at least three virtues. “They are short, they are cheap, and they have a really beautiful cover. The fourth virtue is that they are correct.”
Before becoming a professor, Wurman clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. He then went into private practice in appellate law and litigation ranging from patent to mortgage fraud. There, Wurman gained hands-on experience that he truly enjoyed. “It turns out that being a lawyer is fun,” he says. “It’s important and it matters in really significant and interesting ways. People have interesting problems, and they need attorneys who can think about complex, creative solutions to them.”
While at the firm, Wurman served as a Stanford Constitutional Law Center nonresident fellow and wrote his first book. He then joined the ASU faculty. But he didn’t stay away from practicing law for long. Friends came calling in 2020 with a constitutional legal matter and Wurman decided to help. He was victorious after representing 100-plus bar owners in Arizona state court regarding executive orders that allowed restaurants but not bars to remain open during Covid.
In 2023, Wurman prevailed when representing businesses and homeowners against the City of Phoenix. He developed a novel application of public nuisance laws that paved the way for cities to remove public homeless encampments and move unsheltered people to shelter or housing. The cases reignited Wurman’s appreciation for legal work while also providing helpful examples for his teaching.
In addition to teaching and scholarship — he often tells people that he writes law review articles for fun — Wurman will serve on the intellectual life and clerkship committees. He also will advise students on clerkship opportunities and help interested parties make connections with conservative and originalist judges.
With few ties to Minnesota and little experience with cold weather, Wurman hadn’t envisioned a career at Minnesota Law. But as he met with faculty members and saw their commitment to scholarship and collaboration, he realized that it would be a good fit for him.
“It was very clear that being here would make me better, and being around these people would make me better,” he says. “I hope my being here will make this faculty better, too. It’s a fun and intellectually vibrant place, and they take the intellectual culture very seriously. That was a key attraction for me. I’m looking forward to being part of the intellectual life.”