The coming of age of a new legal discipline: developing the general doctrine of energy law

INTEL makes a ground-breaking contribution to energy law scholarship by developing the general doctrine of energy law in a European context. While all well-established legal disciplines have an understanding of their doctrine, energy law does not.

A general doctrine consolidates the foundations of a discipline and guides legislators, courts and lawyers in identifying, valuing and interpreting legal norms.

In light of the energy transition and the energy crisis in Europe, it is imperative to solidify and cohere the foundations of energy law. INTEL will mark a breakthrough moment in energy law scholarship by putting forward a general doctrine for the field.

This outcome will require constructing and analysing the concepts and principles that drive the field and abstracting its theoretical underpinnings from these analyses.

INTEL is designed around five transversal Research Questions (RQs) that each unravel layers in the development of the doctrine.

Together, the RQs explore the evolution of energy law (RQ1), the concepts and principles emerging from legal sources (RQ2) and the theories underpinning them (RQ3), the way in which legal professionals perceive doctrine (RQ4) and how doctrine can be authenticated by the broader energy law community (RQ5).

The exploration of these RQs relies on a mixed methods approach, with each method implemented in its own Work Package (WP).

These combine natural language processing and temporal network analysis (WP1), doctrinal legal research and jurisprudence (WP2), co-creation with the community of energy law scholars (WP3) and dialogue-driven expert interviews analysed through grounded theory (WP4).

INTEL will advance the field of energy law by bringing coherence and predictability to the legal system governing energy, affording an understanding of the capacity of energy law to govern societal changes and advancing methodological diversity in legal research by creating a novel technique for constructing a general doctrine.