James Coleman

Professor James W. Coleman is a scholar of energy law. He specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on energy policy.

Professor Coleman often writes interdisciplinary papers focused on addressing crucial policy questions and his research is frequently presented before key legal decision-makers in Washington, D.C., and across North America. He has testified before Congress on steps to speed up energy infrastructure permits. He worked with a team of experts as part of Alberta's Royalty Review to revise the Canadian province's management of its vast oil and gas resources.

Before joining Minnesota, Professor Coleman taught at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. Earlier, he practiced environmental and appellate law at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. 

Professor Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University—a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude with highest honors in the field). As a result of his undergraduate thesis on butterfly genetics, which required fieldwork in Central Asia, a species of lycaenid butterfly was named after him—Agrodiaetus ripartii colemani.