The tautological ring is a certain subring of the Chow ring of the moduli space of curves. It is generated by the algebraic cycles that arise from the modular nature of the moduli space, and is one of the most studied objects in enumerative geometry. In this talk, I will explain that any semi stable family of algebraic varieties -- in particular the compactified Jacobians over the moduli space of curves --gives rise to a tautological ring, and discuss the relationship between the tautological rings of compactified Jacobians and the usual tautological ring of the moduli space of curves.