How do judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1978 / Served to 1999

Ellen Ash Peters

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

Ellen Ash Peters was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1978–1999 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Swarthmore College
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Peters authored 555 published opinions for the court (1978–1999), plus 25 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Simms v. Warden, State Prison (582 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 550 of these were attributed to Peters by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1994	Simms v. Warden, State Prison†	230 Conn. 608	582
1990	Liljedahl Bros. v. Grigsby†	215 Conn. 345	572
1980	Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc.†	179 Conn. 471	532
1987	D'Ulisse-Cupo v. Board of Directors of Notre Dame High School†	202 Conn. 206	501
1996	Waters v. Autuori†	236 Conn. 820	485
1994	Simms v. Warden†	229 Conn. 178	407
1982	Shore v. Town of Stonington· Dissent†	187 Conn. 147	403
1991	Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. v. Carriage Lane Associates†	219 Conn. 772	385
1986	Mead v. Burns†	199 Conn. 651	373
1987	Dunham v. Dunham†	204 Conn. 303	301
1993	Samperi v. Inland Wetlands Agency†	226 Conn. 579	288
1979	Juvenile Appeal v. Commissioner of Children & Youth Services†	177 Conn. 648	277
1988	United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Administrator†	209 Conn. 381	273
1992	Garrity v. McCaskey†	223 Conn. 1	265
1987	Finley v. Aetna Life & Casualty Co.†	202 Conn. 190	261

Showing the 15 most-cited of 596 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Ellen Ash Peters on?: Ellen Ash Peters was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

21 years on the Connecticut Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).