THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Ellen Ash Peters

March 21, 1930 – April 17, 2024

“I think a fair number of my colleagues expected me to teach for a few years and then disappear and have babies. I’m not sure when I knew that was nonsense.” 

Attorney, Judge, Educator. Legal trailblazer, who was the first woman on the faculty of Yale Law School; the first female chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court; who wrote a landmark civil rights decision in 1996 desegregating public schools in Hartford.

Elga Wasserman introduces Ellen Ash Peters at Veteran Feminists of America event “Feminism and Its Values – an Intergenerational Dialogue,” April 16, 2005, Cromwell CT.