Featured Faculty: Margaret "Peg" Brinig

Professor of Law

Families are important to Professor Peg Brinig. She has dedicated much of her legal career to researching and teaching family law in an effort to better understand and convey the ways in which various legal, social, economic, and educational policies impact children, parents, and other caregivers. Her empirical work extends beyond families, however.

Brinig, the Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law at the University of Notre Dame and the Associate Dean for Faculty Research, is currently conducting a study with NDLS colleague Nicole Garnett on parochial school closings in Chicago—where hundreds of Catholic schools have closed their doors—and the effect those closings have on the stability of nearby neighborhoods. “We have found a statistically significant correlation between parochial school closings and a lack of social cohesion and more social problems in the impacted neighborhoods,” says Brinig. “Ultimately, we’re finding that Catholic schools promote neighborhood stability.” This is most important for inner city neighborhoods, where Catholic schools may provide the same kind of social networks for families that nuclear families provide in the suburbs. Consistent with the mission that drew her to Notre Dame, Brinig notes that a parent’s religious faith dramatically affects child welfare (though, as you might expect, peers’ religiosity matters more for teens).

Next up is a book to be published by University of Chicago Press, which will “tie theoretical and empirical observations to subjects of current law reform as varied as cohabitation, custody, grandparent visitation, payment for household work, and domestic violence.” This, too, involves questions of what is called social capital: how communities support families and how families support the broader community.

After earning her J.D. from Seton Hall, Brinig clerked for the Honorable Theodore I. Botter of the Superior Court of New Jersey (Law and Appellate Divisions). She then taught at George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, Virginia for nearly 25 years. During that time, she earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason and won the University Distinguished Professor award. She also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and directed the legal writing program.

Brinig came to Notre Dame in 2006 from the College of Law at the University of Iowa, where she was the William G. Hammond Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Development.

Of her hectic combination of administrative, teaching, and research responsibilities, Brinig says she has a great career and feels an obligation to serve her profession and her colleagues to the extent that she is able. “Teaching is fun, and I’d have a hard time successfully administering on behalf of faculty and helping them research more effectively if I didn’t share that common experience with them,” she explains. “Also, administrative work is something that not everyone wants to do. If I can relieve others of the burden and distraction, great.”

For more on Professor Peg Brinig, visit her faculty profile page.