Ellen Ash Peters

Ellen Ash Peters is a Visiting Professor of Law. Professor Peters teaches a seminar that looks at federalism as a comparative law problem in which federal and state law interact and yet have independent spheres of influence and authority. A 1951 graduate of Swarthmore College, she received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1954. After a year of clerking for Chief Judge Charles E. Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then another year as a Research Associate at the University of California Law School at Boalt Hall, she returned to Yale to begin her teaching career of 22 years at that school. Her primary scholarly interests at that time were the law of contracts and the Uniform Commercial Code. She was appointed an Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1978, and named Chief Justice in 1984. For some years before her mandatory retirement from the Court this last spring, she served as Senior Justice. She is now a Judge Trial Referee and sits with the Appellate Court. She has published a casebook, a primer, and numerous articles, in such publications as the Yale Law Journal, the Connecticut Law Review, the Michigan Law Review and the New York University Law Review. She has numerous honorary degrees. She has been a member of the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and an Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation. She currently is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.