Heather Payne awarded 11th annual Morrison Prize for sustainability

 Professor Heather Payne, the Carter C. Kissel Professor in Law at The Ohio State University’s Michael E. Moritz College of Law, has been awarded the 11th annual Morrison Prize for her article, “Reliance and Reliability,” published in the UC Irvine Law Review.

The Morrison Prize is a $10,000 prize awarded to the most influential environmental sustainability-focused law journal article published in North America during the previous year. Sustainability-focused professors from four law schools independently judge all entries to identify the winner each year. The prize is hosted and managed by the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University’s Law and Sustainability program.

“Winning the Morrison Prize is an incredible honor,” Payne said. “I am grateful for the recognition of the fundamental principle of this work: that consumers must be centered in reliability discussions. I am truly delighted to be among those who have been recognized with this award, and my thanks to Arizona State University’s Program on Law and Sustainability for this distinction.”

In her article, Payne examines how legal and regulatory frameworks governing energy reliability often overlook the lived realities and dependence of consumers. She argues that as electricity systems evolve amid climate pressures, grid modernization and the clean-energy transition, regulators must place consumers at the center of reliability planning and decision-making. By reframing reliability as not only a technical engineering challenge but also a legal and equity-driven concern, Payne’s work highlights how consumer reliance on essential energy services should shape regulatory priorities.

Payne’s scholarship focuses on energy law, public utility regulation and the intersection of administrative law and energy policy. Her work explores how regulatory structures can better promote resilience, accountability and fairness in rapidly changing energy systems.

Troy Rule, professor of law and Joseph Feller Memorial Chair in Law and Sustainability at ASU, serves as the Faculty Director of ASU Law’s Law and Sustainability Program and annually coordinates the Morrison Prize Contest. He notes that the Contest continues to grow in prominence within legal academia.

“Professor Payne’s article thoughtfully examines 'reliability' — an important dimension of electricity service that is often overlooked but increasingly important.  As the nation’s electric grid ages and electricity utilities face unprecedented pressures to cut corners on reliability issues, rigorous analyses of utilities’ incentive structures around reliability are crucial to building a just and effective path forward. I am so glad Professor Payne’s valuable work on these issues was recognized through this year’s Morrison Prize,” Rule said.

The Morrison Prize is named in honor of Richard N. Morrison, co-founder of ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

Past winners of the Morrison Prize

• In 2025, Alison Gocke, associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, was awarded for her article, “Public Utility’s Potentia,” published by the Yale Law Journal.
• In 2024, Karrigan Bork, professor of law at the University of California, David School of Law was awarded for his article “Water Right Extractions,” published in 2023 in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.
• In 2023, the award went to “Grid Reliability Through Clean Energy,” which appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 2022 and was authored by professors Alexandra Klass, Joshua Macey, Shelley Welton and Hannah Wiseman.
• In 2022, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission general counsel Matthew Christiansen and University of Chicago Law Professor Joshua Macey won the Morrison Prize for their Harvard Law Review article, “Long Live the Federal Power Act’s Bright Line.”
• In 2021, University of Chicago Law Professor Joshua Macey won the Morrison Prize for his article “Zombie Energy Laws,” which described how certain energy laws were impacting the nation’s decarbonization efforts.
• In 2020, Vanderbilt University Law School Professors Jim Rossi and Christopher Serkin won the Morrison Prize for their insightful article “Energy Exactions,” which was published in the spring 2019 issue of the Cornell Law Review. The article described how local governments could better leverage their land-use regulatory authority to drive substantial increases in rooftop solar energy installations and energy-efficient real estate development.
• In 2019, a six-author team won the Morrison Prize for an unprecedented analysis of the structuring of conservation easements in the face of rapid climate change. The article, titled “Climate change challenges for land conservation: Rethinking conservation easements, strategies, and tools,” was co-written by Federico Cheever, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law; Jessica Owley, director of the environmental law program at University of Buffalo–State University of New York; Adena R. Rissman, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Forestry and Wildlife Ecology; M. Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wide Fund for Nature; Barton H. Thompson Jr., a professor of natural resources at Stanford Law School; and W. William Weeks, director of the Conservation Law Clinic at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.
• In 2018, Minnesota Law School Professor Hari M. Osofsky and Jacqueline Peel, associate dean of the University of Melbourne Law School in Australia, won the prize for their academic article “Energy Partisanship.” They outlined the critical importance of circumventing fierce political divisions to combat climate change and guided doing so.
• In 2017, Vanderbilt University Professors Michael P. Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan won the prize for "Beyond Gridlock." The article underscored the difficulties of effecting change through government and highlighted the underutilized potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the private sector.
• In 2016, Dave Owen, a professor at University of California, Hastings College of Law, and Colin Aspe, a freshwater conservation advisor at the Nature Conservancy, were the inaugural winners of the Morrison Prize. Their article, “Trading Dams,” described creative new policy approaches for better balancing hydroelectric energy generation and environmental protection on the nation’s river system.