Interview with Chief Justice Ellen Ash Peters
IntervieweeInterview with
Ellen Ash Peters
American, 1930 - 2024
InterviewerInterviewed by
Guido Calabresi
Italian American, born 1932
Date2000 July 19
DimensionsDuration: 2 Hours, 28 Minutes, 11 Seconds
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation
DescriptionOral history interview with Chief Justice Ellen Ash Peters who was interviewed by Judge Guido Calabresi on July 19, 2000 for the Connecticut Bar Foundation's History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project.
Topics Discussed:
- Early Life & Immigration: Ellen Peters was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. She, her mother, and sister immigrated to America in December 1939, followed by her father in 1940.
- Family Background: Her father was a lawyer in Germany, and her mother was a housewife with a passion for music.
- High School Education: Peters attended Hunter College High School, an all-girls school in New York, and worked as a fill-in secretary in her father's office, learning to type.
- Cultural Assimilation: She struggled with linguistic differences and sought to assimilate into American culture.
- Family's Religious Identity: Her immediate family was agnostic. Her Jewish father, an assimilated German who fought in World War I and received the Iron Cross, was arrested in September 1938, which prompted their emigration.
- College at Swarthmore: She attended Swarthmore College, triple-majored in political science, economics, and math. J. Roland Pennock: a significant political science professor.
- Law School: She decided to pursue law in high school. She attended Yale Law School, her class included eleven women, a large number due to concerns about male enrollment during the Korean War.
- Law Clerkship: After law school, she clerked for Judge Charles Clark.
- Faculty at Yale Law School: She later joined the Yale Law School faculty. She co-authored a commercial transactions casebook, initially with Grant Gilmore, who eventually gave her full authorship.
- Judicial Career: She moved to Hartford around 1979 and became a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court.
- Sheff v. O'Neill, which refers to a 1989 lawsuit and the subsequent 1996 Connecticut Supreme Court case (Sheff v. O'Neill, 238 Conn. 1, 678 A.2d 1267) that resulted in a landmark decision regarding civil rights and the right to education.
- Retirement & Future.
Topics Discussed:
- Early Life & Immigration: Ellen Peters was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. She, her mother, and sister immigrated to America in December 1939, followed by her father in 1940.
- Family Background: Her father was a lawyer in Germany, and her mother was a housewife with a passion for music.
- High School Education: Peters attended Hunter College High School, an all-girls school in New York, and worked as a fill-in secretary in her father's office, learning to type.
- Cultural Assimilation: She struggled with linguistic differences and sought to assimilate into American culture.
- Family's Religious Identity: Her immediate family was agnostic. Her Jewish father, an assimilated German who fought in World War I and received the Iron Cross, was arrested in September 1938, which prompted their emigration.
- College at Swarthmore: She attended Swarthmore College, triple-majored in political science, economics, and math. J. Roland Pennock: a significant political science professor.
- Law School: She decided to pursue law in high school. She attended Yale Law School, her class included eleven women, a large number due to concerns about male enrollment during the Korean War.
- Law Clerkship: After law school, she clerked for Judge Charles Clark.
- Faculty at Yale Law School: She later joined the Yale Law School faculty. She co-authored a commercial transactions casebook, initially with Grant Gilmore, who eventually gave her full authorship.
- Judicial Career: She moved to Hartford around 1979 and became a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court.
- Sheff v. O'Neill, which refers to a 1989 lawsuit and the subsequent 1996 Connecticut Supreme Court case (Sheff v. O'Neill, 238 Conn. 1, 678 A.2d 1267) that resulted in a landmark decision regarding civil rights and the right to education.
- Retirement & Future.
Object number2024.38.5a-l
NotesProject Overview: At the turn of the 20th century, other than Mary Hall, women lawyers were virtually unknown in Connecticut. By contrast, at the turn of the 21st century, law schools were enrolling roughly the same number of women as men. Since their earliest time at the bar, women have become leaders in all areas of the profession at a pace out of all proportion to their brief history and number. In 1999, the Fellows of the Connecticut Bar Foundation initiated the Oral History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project. Within the framework of this dynamic project, the Fellows have been creating a permanent video, audio, and photographic historical record of milestone achievements of women as they have become more visible and achieved prominence in the field of law. In 2019, a leadership donation of $20,000 from the law firm of Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey enabled the project to significantly broaden its scope and plan for the future.
Through its first two phases, the project worked with award-winning documentarian Karyl Evans and attorney/photographer Isabel Chenoweth to produce fifty-eight oral history interviews with outstanding female attorneys and 118 portraits of women in the Connecticut judiciary.
The oral history interviews have collected the stories of women whose ingenuity, perseverance, and intelligence dismantled barriers that historically prevented women from pursuing careers in the law. Connecticut has benefited from the efforts of these “pioneers” as they enriched the legal profession by joining the ranks of their male peers and paved the way for more women to join the profession. (Source: Connecticut Bar Foundation)
Subject Terms
- Women
- Lawyers
- Women lawyers
- Oral history
- Interview films
- Interview transcripts
- Interviews
- Oral narratives
- Attorneys
- Yale University
- Religion
- Immigration
- Immigrants
- German Americans
- Germany
- Agnosticism
- Education
- Professors
- Chief justices
- Retirement
- Supreme Court justices
- Law schools
- Inequality
- School desegregation
- Connecticut. Supreme Court.
- Sheff v. O'Neill (1996)
- Judges
- Interviews and Oral Histories
- History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project
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