Yaffa Epstein

During her year at CASBS, Yaffa Epstein will complete her book on new legal doctrines emerging around rights of nature. This book focuses on the legal impact of the laws granting rights to natural entities such as rivers and ecosystems that have been established over the past 20 years. She uses both legal doctrinal methods as well as interdisciplinary methods to explore the potential for the development of rights of nature jurisprudence worldwide, including in Europe and the United States. 

Epstein is an associate professor of environmental law at Uppsala University in Sweden and Pro Futura Scientia fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Her research has focused on interdisciplinary methods in law and ecology, especially as applied to EU environmental law and to rights of nature. Her publications include Science and the legal rights of nature (with Aaron M. Ellison, Hugo Echeverría, and Jessica K. Abbott, Science, 2023), Animals and nature as rights holders in the European Union (with Eva Bernet Kempers, Modern Law Review, 2023), and A rights revolution for nature (with Guillaume Chapron and José Vicente López-Bao, Science, 2019). She is co-convenor of the Research Group on Rights of Nature and Animals under the auspices of the International Association of Constitutional Law. She is also currently co-directing a research environment in “legal ecology”, a collaboration between Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Epstein is a Pro Futura Scientia Program Fellow at CASBS for 2025-26.