Ellen Bree Burns

Ellen Bree Burns was born in New Haven, Connecticut on December 13, 1923, to Vincent and Mildred Bree, and grew up in Hamden. She graduated from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven in 1944 and, in 1947, from Yale University Law School, where she was one of the few female students. She married Joseph P. Burns (d. 1982), a television news broadcaster who later worked for charitable organizations.

Ellen Bree Burns was the first woman to serve on Connecticut’s major trial court and the first woman to preside in a federal court in Connecticut. She was a special assistant to the Commission to Revise the Connecticut General Statutes from 1947-1948. She was an attorney for Legislative Legal Services of the State of Connecticut from 1949-1973. She was a judge of the Circuit Court of Connecticut from 1973-1974. She was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Connecticut from 1974-1976. She was a judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1976-1978, appointed by Gov. Ella T. Grasso.

On February 15, 1978, she was nominated by President Jimmy Carter as a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, to a seat vacated by M. Joseph Blumenfeld. She was confirmed by the Senate on May 17, 1978, and received commission on May 18, 1978. She served as chief judge from 1988-1992.

Judge Burns presided in high-profile cases involving, among other things, financial fraud, government corruption, and discrimination against minorities and people with AIDS.

She died on June 3, 2019 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sources:

Ellen Bree Burns at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Fried, J. P. (2019, June 4). Ellen Bree Burns, barrier-breaking Connecticut judge, dies at 95. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/obituaries/judge-ellen-b-burns-dead.html