Diane Hoffmann, JD, MS, is the Jacob A. France Professor of Health Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and Director of the law school’s Law & Health Care Program. She served as Associate Dean of the Law School from 1999 – 2013. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her Master's degree from Harvard School of Public Health.

Diane was one of the primary authors of Maryland’s Health Care Decisions Act, which establishes standards and procedures for making medical decisions for individuals at the end of life who lack decision-making capacity. She has served as a member of a number of ethics committees including those at the University of Maryland Medical System and the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health. She is the founder and director of the Maryland Healthcare Ethics Committee Network, which publishes the Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter.

From June 1994–May 1995, Hoffmann was the Acting Staff Director of the Senate Subcommittee on Aging reporting to U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. In 2009, she was selected one of the Maryland Daily Record’s Top 100 Women. From 2008–2014, she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and as President of the Board in 2010 and 2011. She is currently a member of the Maryland Stem Cell Commission, the Composite Committee of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Medical Regulation, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Gut Microbiome Research & Education at the American Gastroenterological Association.

She is the recipient of three NIH grants, most recently an R01 from the National Human Genome Research Institute to evaluate the regulatory framework for direct-to-consumer microbiome-based tests. Her scholarship has focused generally on end of life care, legal obstacles to the treatment of chronic pain, and the regulation of new medical therapies and technologies. Her recent publications have included articles on the regulation of microbiome-based therapies, including probiotics and microbiota transplants, implementation of state allocation of scarce medical resource plans and liability of health care workers during COVID-19, and hospice disposal of opioids. Hoffmann has published numerous articles on health law and policy issues in legal journals as well as scientific and medical journals including Science, JAMA, the NEJM, and the Annals of Internal Medicine.