Areas of Expertise
- Achievement Gap
- Bioethics
- Education Reform Law
- Health Law
- Medical Malpractice
- Tort Law
About Philip Peters
Professor Peters is the Ruth L. Hulston Professor Emeritus of Law He taught at MU from 1986 to 2017. He is an expert in medical malpractice law and medical malpractice reform. In that capacity, he currently serves as an Advisor to the drafters of medical malpractice provisions of the Restatement Third of Torts. Professor Peters served for many years as a member and then president of the board of the directors of the Family Health Center, a clinic whose doors are open to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.
His other area of scholarly interest is the identification of educational reforms with the greatest potential to reduce racial achievement disparities. Professor Peters took a two-year leave of absence from the School of Law to be the Executive Director of First Chance for Children, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing educational disparities by improving the start that low-income children get before they enter kindergarten. He currently serves on the Board of the Cradle to Career Alliance, a nonprofit that fosters better collaboration among community agencies fighting achievement disparities.
Professor Peters graduated with honors from Harvard College in 1972, received a Rotary Fellowship for advanced study at the University of Edinburgh, and went to law school at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his J.D., Order of the Coif (top 10%) in 1976. While teaching an MU, Professor Peters spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University in England.
He began his career as a trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and then spent several years in private practice before joining the MU faculty.