Evan Frankel Professor of Policy and Practice
- B.A. Yale, 1988
- J.D. University of Michigan, 1995
- UCLA Faculty Since 2003
Sean Hecht is Evan Frankel Professor of Policy and Practice and the managing attorney of Earthjustice’s California Regional Office. Based out of Earthjustice’s Los Angeles office, he oversees the California Regional Office’s public-interest environmental work. From 2003 to 2023, Sean was a full-time member of UCLA Law’s faculty, serving as co-executive director of UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and co-director of the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic.
Sean returns to UCLA Law in 2025 to teach Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy. His prior teaching has included Public Natural Resources Law and Policy, Environmental Law, Climate Change Seminar, a California State Environmental Law seminar, and the Environmental Law Clinic, in addition to Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy. While on the full-time faculty at UCLA, he also co-directed the Emmett Institute’s research and teaching programs, and advised and mentored hundreds of students. Sean is a leading scholar on the ways the insurance sector interacts with climate change, and has published articles on other issues as well. His publications have appeared in the UCLA Law Review, Virginia Law Review Online, Vermont Law Review, Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Stanford Journal of International Law, and California Legal History. He has been called on as an expert source for print and broadcast media, and a radio, podcast, and conference speaker, on a range of environmental issues.
After law school, Sean served as law clerk for Hon. Laughlin E. Waters of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He began law practice at the firm Strumwasser & Woocher, litigating cases involving election law, employment law, environmental and land-use law, and insurance regulation, and he served as a Deputy Attorney General for the California Department of Justice, representing the Attorney General and state agencies on environmental and public health matters. He is a past chair of both the California Lawyers Association Environmental Law Section, and the California Lawyers Association Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Along with co-counsel in Center for Biological Diversity v. Department of Fish and Wildlife, he received the 2016 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award for environmental law. In 2020, Sean was appointed as a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.