Featured Faculty: Jennifer Mason McAward
A firm grasp of the law is crucial for aspiring civil rights lawyers. But for Associate Professor Jennifer Mason McAward, it’s just as important for students to know the human stories behind the law.
“The law is a powerful tool for providing justice and shaping people’s lives,” says Mason McAward, who teaches courses and conducts research on civil rights, habeas corpus, and constitutional law. “In every case that we study, I try to dig up the stories of the litigants to give the students a sense that it’s not just an abstract set of principles that we’re studying, but to show how the law affects the lives of real people.”
After earning her undergraduate degree in government from Notre Dame, Mason McAward worked for one year in a Portland battered women’s shelter as a Holy Cross Associate. “It was a really important experience to be exposed to an entirely different community and the problems that people grapple with on a daily basis,” she says. In 1998, she received her J.D. summa cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was managing editor of the law review.
Following law school, Mason McAward clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit and then for United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She also practiced law and completed a public service fellowship with Holland & Knight LLP in Washington, D.C.
Mason McAward returned to Notre Dame in 2005, hoping to infuse stories from her experience and the lives of others into her teaching. Following a student’s suggestion, she asked Notre Dame President Emeritus Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., to talk to her civil rights class about his work on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1957 to 1972. “He was part of the Commission appointed by the President that essentially drafted Title VII, one of the equal employment opportunity laws in the country. Hearing him tell stories of how the laws that we study were breathed into life is a really powerful experience for me and for the students. It’s become a tradition,” she adds.
In 2007, Mason McAward’s students voted her Professor of the Year after just two years of teaching. They praised her knowledge, passion, and willingness to advise them as a mentor. “She’s a very challenging professor, which day to day isn’t so much of a burden as it is a fantastic opportunity to learn,” says Dory Mitros Durham ’06, now a public interest attorney with Indiana Legal Services. “It was amazing to have someone who could teach you the law on the high level that she was capable of, but at the same time make it so deeply personal and convey our collective experience as a country.”
To learn more about Jennifer Mason McAward, visit her faculty profile page.
