Education
- Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Michigan. Project: Impartiality and the Justification of Moral Principles
- JD, Law, University of Utah
Biography
Leslie P. Francis, Ph.D., J.D., holds joint appointments as Alfred C. Emery professor of law and professor of philosophy, and adjunct appointments in Family and Preventive Medicine (in the Division of Public Health), Internal Medicine (in the Division of Medical Ethics), and Political Science, at the University of Utah. She was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor in 2009 and was initial director of University of Utah Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences from 2015-2022. Professor Francis was President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2015-2016. From 2015-2019 she served as the elected Secretary-General of the International Society for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. She is a past member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and past co-chair of the Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security Subcommittee of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics. Professor Francis also has been a member of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee and of the American Bar Association's Commission on Law and Aging. She regularly provides pro bono representation for people who are the subject of guardianship petitions through a special program of the Utah State Bar and state courts.
Professor Francis's books include States of Health: Federalism and Bioethics, (co-authored with John Francis; forthcoming in 2024 from Oxford University Press); Sustaining Surveillance: The Importance of Information for Public Health (co-authored with John Francis; Springer, 2021), The Patient as Victim and Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease (co-authored with Battin, Jacobson, & Smith; Oxford University Press, 2010; reissued with a new preface 2021) and Privacy: What Everyone Needs to Know (co-authored with John Francis; Oxford, 2017). She edited the Oxford Handbook of Reproductive Ethics (Oxford University Press, January 2017) and is the author of many papers in the areas of disability law and ethics, privacy and data use, justice, and bioethics.
Blog Posts & Media Highlights
#FrancisOnFilm: Mission Impossible, The Week in Health Law Podcast August 2, 2018
Making "Meaningful Access" Meaningful: Equitable Healthcare for Divisive Times: Harvard Law School's "Bill of Health" blog May 27, 2018
No Dark Algorithms Here, The Week in Health Law Podcast July 6, 2017