Leslie E. Wolf

Leslie E. Wolf is the Ben F. Johnson Jr. Chair in Law, a Distinguished University Professor and professor of law, with appointments in the College of Law and the School of Public Health. Wolf served as interim dean from 2019-2021 and as director of the Center for Law, Health & Society from 2014-2019.

Wolf is a leading national scholar in health law, public health and ethics, with a focus on research ethics. Her research has appeared in some of the most prestigious medical and public health journals in the country, as well as in law reviews, and is widely cited by scholars nationally and internationally. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Greenwall Foundation.

Wolf was a member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), which provides expert advice and recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Secretary on issues pertaining to the protection of human subjects in research from 2016-2021. She remains a member of SACHRP’s Subcommittee on Harmonization. She previously served on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ethics Subcommittee to the Advisory Committee to the Director (2008-2012) and has served as a peer reviewer for the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health.

Prior to joining the law school, Wolf was on the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco in the Program in Medical Ethics and the Center for AIDS Prevention Study. She also served on the UCSF institutional review board and its advisory committee regarding stem cell research.

Wolf graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, she clerked for the Massachusetts Appeals Court, before joining the San Francisco law firm, Hancock, Rothert and Bunshoft. She left law practice when she was selected as a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy, during which she earned her master in public health degree from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.