Webmail
School Directory
Mary Jean Dolan
Assistant Professor
The John Marshall Law School
315 South Plymouth Court
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Phone: 312.427.2737 ext. 867
Email: mdolan@jmls.edu
Office: Room 805
Office Hours: Tues. 2-3 p.m.; Thurs. 4-5 p.m.; and by appointment
BA, magna cum laude, University of Notre Dame, Phi Beta Kappa
JD, cum laude, Northwestern University School of Law
Scholarship | SSRN Publications | Presentations
Mary Jean Dolan joined the faculty in 2007 and teaches Constitutional Law, Family Law, First Amendment, Lawyering Skills, and Religion & Law. She has written and presented extensively on the First Amendment, an area in which she gained expertise by writing laws and policies for the City of Chicago. In 2009, the amicus brief she authored for the International Municipal Lawyers' Association was cited and relied on by the United States Supreme Court majority in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. Professor Dolan's articles have appeared in journals including the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the Catholic University Law Review, the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, and the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.
Professor Dolan also has taught as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Florida and IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she developed scholarly interest in family law, feminist theory, and legal pedagogy. She clerked for Judge Ilana Rovner, then on the US District Court, worked as an associate at Mayer Brown in Chicago, and was an editor of the Northwestern University Law Review.
Scholarship
Cautious Contextualism: A Response to Prof. Tebbe's Nonbelievers, Virginia Law Review In Brief (June 2012)
The Cross National Memorial: At the Intersection of Speech and Religion, 61 Case Western Reserve Law Review 1171 (2011)
Salazar v. Buono:The Cross Between Endorsement and History, 105 Nw. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 42 (2010)
Government Identity Speech and Religion: Establishment Clause Limits After Summum, 19 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 1 (October 2010)
Why Donated Monuments are Government Speech: The Hard Case of Pleasant Grove v. Summum, 58 Catholic University Law Review 7 (Fall 2008)
Government-Sponsored Chaplaincies and Crisis: Walking the Fine Line in Disaster Response and Daily Life, 35 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 505 (Spring 2008)
Presentations
5th Annual Emerging Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference, "An Empirical Critique of the ALI Approximation Rule for Child Custody Disputes," Fordham Law School (May 21-22, 2012)
Faculty Works-in-Progress Series, "Questioning Christians, Cafeteria Catholics, and Creeds: The Reasonableness of a Religious Oath for Student Group Membership at a Public University," The John Marshall Law School (April 5, 2012)
3rd Annual Religious Legal Theory Conference, "The Reasonableness of a Reliqious Oath for Student Group Membership at a Public University" Pepperdine University School of Law (February 23-25, 2012) Listen to the Podcast (#15)
2012 AALS Annual Conference, Teaching Innovations Panel, "Changes in Law Practice: Implications for Legal Education" Workshop, Washington, DC (January 5, 2012)
7th Biennial Central States Legal Writing Conference, "Cross-Disciplinary Insights: How Business Management Research on Employee Evaluations Can Improve Student-Teacher Conferences," The John Marshall Law School (September 17, 2011)
Faculty Works-in-Progress Series, "National Memorial Designations: the Government's New Historical-Religious Speech," The John Marshall Law School (April 14, 2011)
Legal Writing Institute "Nuts and Bolts" One-Day Workshop, "The LW Syllabus" and "Creating Opportunities for Scholarship," Suffolk University Law School (December 3, 2010)
Government Speech Symposium, "The Establishment Clause Limits of Government Speech," Case Western University Law School (November 19, 2010)
Nw. U. L. Rev. Review Colloquy Symposium on Salazar v. Buono, "The Future of the Establishment Clause," The John Marshall Law School (October 15, 2010) Listen to the Podcast
Legal Writing Institute 14th Biennial Conference, "Don't Shoot the Messenger! How to Give Effective Critiques of Written Work While Disarming the Writer," Marco Island, Florida (June 30, 2010)
Law & Religion Roundtable, "Salazar v. Buono: the Cross as National Memorial," Brooklyn Law School (June 24, 2010)
Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, "The Limits of Determinacy: An Empirical Critique of the ALI Approximation Rule for Child Custody Disputes," Chicago, Illinois (May 27, 2010)
Faculty Works-in-Progress Series, "Government Identity Speech and the Endorsement Test," The John Marshall Law School, (September 10, 2009)
Oxford Round Table, "Religious, Historical, and Communitarian Government Speech—Its Net Impact on Minority Religious and Free Speech Rights," Oxford, England (July 19-24, 2009)
Emerging Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference, "Postnuptial Contracts and Marital Equality," University of Colorado Law School (May 26-27, 2009)
Faculty Works-In-Progress Series, "Why Monuments are Government Speech: The Hard Case of Pleasant Grove v. Summum," The John Marshall Law School (October 16, 2008)
Global Legal Skills Conference, "Best Practices in Teaching Legal Research," Monterey, Mexico (February 28-29, 2008)
