Biography
Professor Angela Hefti is an Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law. Prior to joining FIU Law in 2025, she held a fellowship at Harvard Law School, where she investigated how human rights law can respond to the legal challenges posed by climate change.
Professor Hefti’s scholarship on international climate law, international human rights and international criminal law has been recognized both in the United States and internationally. Her open access book, titled 'Conceptualizing Femicide as a Human Rights Violation: State Responsibility Under International Law' has been awarded the Professor Walther Hug Prize, the highest distinction for doctoral dissertations in Switzerland. Professor Hefti’s research on standing in climate-related human rights cases, ecofeminism and climate risks has appeared in Transnational Environmental Law, the Harvard Human Rights Journal and the Michigan Journal of International Law. Her contributions to comparative and international climate law are forthcoming in the Yale Journal of International Law and Washington Law Review.
Professor Hefti’s research is informed by international practice experience. She clerked at the Asylum Division of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court, the highest court for asylum appeals in the country. She was also a Yale Robina Fellow at the European Court of Human Rights in France, where she clerked for Judge Helen Keller before serving as a lawyer in the research and case processing divisions of the Court. Drawing on this experience, she contributed to the application of Verein KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, the first climate case decided by the European Court of Human Rights. She has also contributed to amicus briefs in emerging climate proceedings before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. Additionally, Professor Hefti has experience from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica and the Appeals Chamber of the Rwanda Tribunal in the Netherlands.
Professor Hefti completed her LL.M. at Yale Law School as a Fulbright Scholar. While at Yale, she served as an editor for the Yale Journal of International Law and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, engaged in human rights fact-finding through the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, and co-founded the YLS European Law Student Association. She earned her PhD in Law from the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. During her doctoral studies, she conducted research stays at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Germany and at Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights. She also holds a Master of Law in Transnational Legal Studies from the University of Lucerne and a Bachelor of Law with a focus on European and Religious Law as well as bilingual studies from the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland.
Education
- PhD in Law, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
- LL.M., Yale Law School
- Master of Law, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
- Bachelor of Law, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland