Interview with Judge Ellen Bree Burns
IntervieweeInterview with
Ellen Bree Burns
American, 1923 - 2019
InterviewerInterviewed by
A. Susan Peck
American, born 1945
Date2000 November 15
DimensionsDuration: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation
DescriptionOral history interview with Judge Ellen Bree Burns who was interviewed by Judge A. Susan Peck on November 15, 2000 for the Connecticut Bar Foundation's History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project.
Topics Discussed:
- Early Background and Education : Ellen Bree Burns was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 13, 1923, and lived most of her life in Hamden, Connecticut.
- Family: Her father worked in the State Labor Department as a Veterans' Employment representative. Her mother was a housewife who later worked as an inspector during World War II.
- Early Education: Spring Glen Grammar School and Hamden High School, graduating from high school in 1941.
- Family Lawyers: Her paternal grandfather, uncle, and brother were lawyers, and her father attended law school for a year before World War I.
- College: She attended Albertus Magnus in New Haven, graduating in September 1944 with an English major.
- Mary Goode Rogan.
- Yale Law School Experience : Entered Yale Law School in the summer of 1945, and completed the three-year program in two years due to wartime acceleration. She graduated in 1947.
- Women at Yale Law School: Yale Law School accepted women earlier than Harvard, which started in 1952. Approximately five or six women were in Burns' class.
- Yale Library.
- First Job: Her first job after law school was with the legislative commissioner's office in Connecticut, revising Connecticut statutes. She started in 1949 and found the work intriguing and exciting.
- Law Firms and Associations: She was invited to join Bill Gordon, a practicing lawyer in Hartford, and later became a partner in Gordon, Muir and Hollis. She was a member of the Federal Practice Committee and the Connecticut Bar Association.
- Challenges as a Woman in Law.
- Marriage and Children: She married in 1955. She had three children.
Topics Discussed:
- Early Background and Education : Ellen Bree Burns was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 13, 1923, and lived most of her life in Hamden, Connecticut.
- Family: Her father worked in the State Labor Department as a Veterans' Employment representative. Her mother was a housewife who later worked as an inspector during World War II.
- Early Education: Spring Glen Grammar School and Hamden High School, graduating from high school in 1941.
- Family Lawyers: Her paternal grandfather, uncle, and brother were lawyers, and her father attended law school for a year before World War I.
- College: She attended Albertus Magnus in New Haven, graduating in September 1944 with an English major.
- Mary Goode Rogan.
- Yale Law School Experience : Entered Yale Law School in the summer of 1945, and completed the three-year program in two years due to wartime acceleration. She graduated in 1947.
- Women at Yale Law School: Yale Law School accepted women earlier than Harvard, which started in 1952. Approximately five or six women were in Burns' class.
- Yale Library.
- First Job: Her first job after law school was with the legislative commissioner's office in Connecticut, revising Connecticut statutes. She started in 1949 and found the work intriguing and exciting.
- Law Firms and Associations: She was invited to join Bill Gordon, a practicing lawyer in Hartford, and later became a partner in Gordon, Muir and Hollis. She was a member of the Federal Practice Committee and the Connecticut Bar Association.
- Challenges as a Woman in Law.
- Marriage and Children: She married in 1955. She had three children.
Object number2024.38.9a-g
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
- Law schools
- New Haven (Conn.)
- Hamden (Conn.)
- World War, 1939-1945
- World War, 1914-1918
- Education
- Laws (Statutes)
- Law firms
- Family
- Marriage
- Children
- Judges
- Interviews and Oral Histories
- History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project
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