Mary Shanley

Who is Mary Shanley?

Mary Lyndon Shanley is a feminist legal scholar specializing in issues of the American family and reproductive technologies. Her book Just Marriage weighed into the controversy around gay marriage with a historical and political science perspective at a time when the debate in the United States was at its height in 2004. She has been a central thinker in the idea of the "ethic of care" in US political science.

She is also the author of Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England and Making Babies, Making Families: What Matters Most in an Age of Reproductive Technologies, Surrogacy, Adoption, and Same-Sex and Unwed Parents.

Dr. Shanley received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her Masters and Doctoral degrees in political science from Harvard University. She is currently the Margaret Stiles Halleck Professor of Political Science at Vassar College and lives in Poughkeepsie, NY where she also teaches in the local jail.