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Interview with Judge Janet Bond Arterton

IntervieweeInterview with Janet Bond Arterton American, born 1944

InterviewerInterviewed by Kate Stith American

Date2017 January 4

DimensionsDuration: 9 Minutes, 6 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation

DescriptionOral history interview with Judge Janet Bond Arterton who was interviewed by Kate Stith-Cabranes on January 4, 2017 for the Connecticut Bar Foundation's History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project.

Topics Discussed:

- Early Life: Judge Arterton was born in Philadelphia and her family moved to Princeton, New Jersey when she was five. Her mother faced challenges as an architect due to discrimination.

- Early Experiences with Injustice: Judge Arterton's early exposure to the Civil Rights movement, particularly the Princeton Plan for school desegregation, instilled in her an idea that changes had to be made.

- College Years: Judge Arterton attended Mount Holyoke College, initially as a zoology major before switching to political science. During her senior year, she organized a write-in campaign for herself to be elected County Coroner of Mercer County, New Jersey, with her future husband, Christopher Arterton, as her campaign manager. She won.

- Early Career: After college, Judge Arterton worked for two years as a press and appointment secretary for a Republican congressman in Washington. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and the subsequent unrest in Washington was a wake up call for her. She then moved to Boston and worked in community development as an urban planner developing a pilot program for industry-based daycare for lower-income employees around 1969.

- Experience in Mexico: Judge Arterton spent a year in rural Mexico with her husband, Chris, assisting with his dissertation research on political participation in rural Mexican villages.

- Juvenile Justice Reform: Upon returning to Boston, she became involved in de-institutionalizing the juvenile justice system, closing juvenile jails, and replacing them with community-based alternatives.

- Law School: Judge Arterton decided to go to Northeastern University Law School.
Her first co-op was with a large law firm, where she analyzed whether sex-based actuarial tables violated Title VII. She also completed co-ops with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Civil Rights Division and a criminal defense firm, and later with a midsize firm in New Haven.

- Clerkship: After law school, she clerked for Judge Herbert J. Stern in the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey. She ultimately joined a small firm formed by former legal aid lawyers, becoming their first associate and first woman. This firm specialized in employment discrimination and civil rights law. She spent sixteen years there.

- Family Life: Judge Arterton began her practice almost six months pregnant with her second child.

- Federal Judgeship: She became a judge in 1995. The desire to become a federal judge emerged in the summer of 1992, during a trip to France, where she became aware of the human rights abuses and lack of functioning courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

- Appointment Process as a Federal Judge: To become a federal judge, she wrote letters to Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman. She underwent a Judiciary Committee hearing in February, presented by Senator Dodd, and the Senate voted to confirm her nomination on March 24th.

Object number2024.38.56a-b

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)