Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

Energy Law Research Guide

This guide is intended as a starting point for research on energy law, especially the transportation, distribution, and sale of energy and energy-related natural resources in interstate commerce. Both primary and secondary materials in print and electroni

State Regulations & Agencies

STATE

States typically regulate public utilities through public utility commissions. Contact information for and links to the web sites of all state public utility commissions are available from the National Association of Public Utility Commissioners web site.

Public utility commission decisions can be found in the following databases:

Lexis

Public Utilities/Public Service Commission Decisions available for almost all states - Browse Sources > Search Sources > Public Commission Decisions

Westlaw

Public Utilities Reports: available for all 50 states

State public utility commissions also issue regulations related to energy distribution. None of the standard legal research databases has state regulation databases limited to the topic of energy regulation. Consult the full regulation databases for individual states:

Lexis

Individual States (Browse Sources > Search Sources > Filter to Administrative Codes and Regulations > Administrative Codes)

Westlaw: Administrative Regulations for Individual States

Bloomberg Law: Browse individual state resources to locate State Administrative Codes

Using Google to Find Primary Materials

The Google site command is a very effective way to search through specific state websites, or through specific domains (.gov, .org, etc).  In fact, using the Google site search is usually the easiest way by which to find information on federal and state government websites. 

It's a very simple search technique using the "site" command, as shown below. 

This search will look for the terms "fracking" and "oklahoma" within the Department of Interior website.   Simply identify the particular URL for the website you want to search and then use the site: command to search only through that particular website.