Joan Mahoney is distinguished legal scholar and former dean of two law schools. She served as Dean at Wayne State University Law School

Wayne State University Law School

Wayne State University Law School is located in the City of Detroit’s Cultural Center, and is one of the schools of Wayne State University. It is one of two public law schools in the state of Michigan. The Law School has educated and trained lawyers since 1927, and its 10,000+ alumni serve as...

 in Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

, from 1998 to 2003, the first woman law school dean in Michigan and one of the very few women in the United States to have held the deanship at two different law schools. Prior to her tenure as Dean at Wayne State, she served from 1994 to 1996 as Dean of Western New England College School of Law

Western New England College School of Law

Western New England University School of Law is a private, American Bar Association-accredited law school in Western Massachusetts, the only ABA-accredited law school in Massachusetts outside the greater Boston area....

 in Springfield, Massachusetts

Springfield, Massachusetts

Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...

. (Women law school deans remain a distinct minority; others have included Barbara Aronstein Black

Barbara Aronstein Black

Barbara Aronstein Black is an American legal scholar. She was the first woman to head an Ivy League law school. when she became Dean of Columbia Law School in 1986. Black is George Wellwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia....

 at Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

, Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the Court's 112th justice and fourth female justice....

 at Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, Kathleen Sullivan

Kathleen Sullivan

Kathleen Marie Sullivan is a professor at the Stanford Law School and name partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a litigation-only law firm with offices in California, New York, Silicon Valley, Chicago, San Francisco, Germany, London, and Tokyo where she chairs their national appellate...

 at Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School is a graduate school at Stanford University located in the area known as the Silicon Valley, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. The Law School was established in 1893 when former President Benjamin Harrison joined the faculty as the first professor of law...

, and the Hon. Kristin Booth Glenn and Michelle J. Anderson at the City University of New York School of Law

City University of New York School of Law

CUNY School of Law is a law school in New York City, founded in 1983.In 1981, CUNY hired Charles Halpern to be its founding Dean. This law school was established as a public interest law school. The curriculum integrates clinical teaching methods with traditional areas of legal study.In Spring of...

).

Born in New York City, Joan Mahoney is the daughter of the late prize-winning writer William B. Mahoney

William B. Mahoney

William B. Mahoney was a prize-winning U.S. journalist and writer who had a successful late-in-life second career as a substance-abuse counselor....

. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, attended Wayne State Law School and received her J.D. there, and received a PhD. from Wolfson College

Wolfson College, Cambridge

Wolfson College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Wolfson is one of a small number of Cambridge colleges which admit only students over the age of 21. The majority of students at the college are postgraduates, with around 15% studying undergraduate...

, University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. A distinguished legal scholar, she has published widely on reproductive rights, constitutional law, legal history, comparative civil liberties, and bioethics. Her sister Martha R. Mahoney is a Professor of Law at the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

School of Law and the author of numerous works on domestic violence and critical race theory.