A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, she subsequently served as a senior policy adviser to Harold Hongju Koh, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. She also served as a law clerk to Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Dickinson and her students at Connecticut School of Law have been asked to prepare research memoranda for the Iraqi Special Tribunal.