Marianne Constable has published broadly on a range of topics in legal rhetoric and philosophy. She is working on two projects: a history of the "new unwritten law," which ostensibly exonerated women who killed their husbands in Chicago a century ago; and a book on legal speech acts. She is the author of Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law (2005). Her earlier book, The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and Changes in Conceptions of Citizenship, Law and Knowledge (1994), won the Law and Society Association's J. Willard Hurst Prize in Legal History.

She is also the author of articles on, among other topics, Foucault and immigration law, Nietzsche and jurisprudence, the rhetoric of "community," the role of law in the liberal arts, Frederick Schauer on rules, Robert Cover on violence, Montesquieu on systems and Vico on legal education. She has co-edited two books on law and society and has served on numerous editorial boards relating to law and humanities and law and society.

She was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during 2005-06; her awards include the NEH, a prize for undergraduate research mentoring at UCB, the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, and the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities' James Boyd White Award. She currently holds the Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Education