Professor Dolgin has a B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, a Ph.D. in anthropology from Princeton University, and a J.D. from the Yale Law School. Her scholarly work combines insights from anthropology and legal scholarship.

Before coming to Hofstra Professor Dolgin taught anthropology at Columbia University and served as an associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in Manhattan. In 1988-89 she taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a Fulbright Scholar. She has also held appointments as a visiting professor of law at Cornell Law School, Boston University School of Law, and Cardozo School of Law.

Professor Dolgin's books include Jewish Identity and the JDL (Princeton University Press), Symbolic Anthropology (co-edited, Columbia University Press), Defining the Family, and Bioethics and the Law (co-authored, Aspen Publishers).

Defining the Family examines the complicated, often contradictory, responses of the law to the radical changes that have altered the scope and meaning of the American family since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Bioethics and the Law, co-authored with Professor Lois Shepherd, is a casebook intended for use by practitioners and in law school teaching. It is structured around a life span approach to bioethical questions. In addition to topics generally covered in accounts of bioethics, the book includes analyses of public health (including bioterrorism), access to health care, and conflicts of interest faced by health care providers.

Professor Dolgin has written many articles, published in a variety of law reviews, other scholarly journals, and edited volumes. Much of this work has analyzed legal responses to shifts in the family (including those occasioned by developments in reproductive technology and by the "new genetics") and to shifts in the structure of health care in the United States and elsewhere. Professor Dolgin lectures widely in the United States and abroad about health care law, bioethics, and family law.