She is the author of many books, including Comparative Legal Traditions, A Nation Under Lawyers, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, The Transformation of Family Law and Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. Her newest book, to be published soon by Random House, is entitled Rights from Wrongs: The Story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Professor Glendon is a past President of the International Association of Legal Science, a member of the editorial boards of the American Journal of Comparative Law and First Things, and serves on the advisory boards of the Harvard University Human Rights Initiative and the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. She was head of the Holy See Delegation to the 4th U.N. Women's Conference in 1995, and sits on the boards of trustees at Catholic University and at St. John's Seminary.

Prior to joining the faculty at the Harvard Law School, she was a professor at the Boston College Law School, and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and at the Gregorian University in Rome. She was an attorney in private practice at the Chicago firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt from 1963-68.