Jane Marie Law received her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from the University of Colorado, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago, where her work in history of religions focused on Japanese ritual performance and ritual studies. She has spent over five years in Japan conducting field research.

Over the last several years, she has been working on a monograph on Buddhist monasticism in the United States. She has also served on the board of directors for Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies in Ithaca, New York, the North American seat of the personal monastery of Holiness the Dalai Lama. In her scholarship and teaching, she is concerned with fusing activism with scholarship,and social responsibility with teaching as a vocation. In the last several years she has been involved in projects to bring scholars working on issues of religion and human rights together with social activists and educators working on these issues.