I am paying fond tribute to a mentor. Late last month, former Connecticut Chief Justice Ellen Peters announced her retirement after nearly four decades as an appellate jurist. As is her wont, Justice Peters was self-effacing at her retirement ceremony – she mainly spoke about the influence on her career of two of her colleagues, former Justices Robert Glass and David Shea – so I will boast a bit on her behalf: One of the greatest judges in Connecticut history has hung up her robes and we are the poorer for her going.
I clerked for Justice Peters during the 1999-2000 Supreme Court year. It was an unsettled time for her. Justice Peters turned 70 that March and constitutional fiat forced her to trade the familiar confines of 231 Capitol Avenue for the cramped quarters of 95 Washington Street. Like my father, Justice Peters is a Berlin-born yekke – a Yiddish term that connotes the German-Jewish cultural inclination to revere attention to detail and to harbor distaste for disorder – and the prospect of being uprooted from her professional home of the previous 23 years must have taken its toll.
