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 became director of the University of Utah Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences in 2015. 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.

Professor Francis's books include The Patient as Victim and Vector: Ethics and Infectious Disease (co-authored with Battin, Jacobson, & Smith; Oxford University Press 2010, reissue 2020 in press) 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.  As a disability rights advocate, she regularly provides pro bono representation for people who are the subject of guardianship proceedings, seeking to ensure that their rights to independence are fully protected.  Her international interests include health care, data privacy, and human rights.