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Interview with Kate Stith-Cabranes

IntervieweeInterview with Kate Stith American

InterviewerInterviewed by Janet Bond Arterton American, born 1944

Date2017 January 4

DimensionsDuration: 9 Minutes, 14 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation

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

Topics Discussed:

- Early Life and Legal Interest: Kate Stith discusses how her parents influenced her interest in law. Her father, who had to leave law school for World War II, and her mother, a legal reformer, inspired four of their five surviving children to become lawyers.

- High School: Kate attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri. She recalls working on the Gene McCarthy campaign in 1968 and her early desire to be a newspaper reporter.

- College Experience: Kate started at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and then moved to Berkeley. After marrying Jeffrey Pressman, she attended Dartmouth College, which was not coed at the time. She became an activist for coeducation and was in the first class to graduate women in 1973. She also ranked first in her class academically.

- Harvard Law School: Kate attended a joint program at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. She was one of only a few women on the Harvard Law Review, where she and her friend, Susan Estrich, bonded over discriminatory experiences.

- Legal Clerkships : After law school, she clerked for Judge Carl McGowan on the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Byron White on the Supreme Court.

- Government Service : She worked at the Council of Economic Advisors and then became Special Assistant to the head of the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice. In 1981, she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York. She was recruited by Rudy Giuliani to work on Mafia cases.

- Career in Academia: Her transition to academia at Yale Law School was facilitated by an interview arranged through her brother, Richard Stith. She became the first woman Acting Dean at Yale.

- Reflections on Career and Life: Kate expresses some regret about not taking more time off to be with her young children. She also mentions her involvement in non-academic pursuits, such as the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women in Connecticut in the mid-1980s and the Women's Campaign School at Yale.

Object number2024.38.58a-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)