School Notes: Yale Law School
September/October 2014

Remembering an emeritus professor

Quintin Johnstone ’51JSD died in June in Hamden, Connecticut, at the age of 99. Johnstone, the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor Emeritus of Law, was an expert in property, land transactions, and professional responsibility and the legal profession. In his more than 55 years at Yale Law School, he taught courses in real property, professional ethics, legal problems of developing countries, conflict of laws, criminal law, torts, and legislation. His academic influence reached across the globe to Ethiopia, where he was a cofounder of the Haile Selassie I University Law School (now Addis Ababa University School of Law), serving as its dean from 1967 to 1969. From 1985 to 2000, he was also a professor at New York Law School and became professor emeritus there in 2000. Johnstone entered emeritus status at Yale Law School in 1985, and continued to teach until 2011.

Former justice honored at last sitting

Ellen Ash Peters ’54LLB, former chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, presided over her final court session on May 20. She spent 22 years on the Supreme Court, including 12 in the highest position in the state judiciary, before transitioning to the Connecticut Appellate Court as a judge trial referee in 2000. Peters was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1978 by the late governor Ella Grasso. Over the course of a momentous career, Justice Peters has been the first woman tenured professor at Yale Law School, the first woman appointed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, the first woman chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and the first woman president of the Conference of Chief Justices.

Law School clinic drafts veterans law

On June 9, Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy signed into law H.B. 5299, a sweeping piece of veterans’ employment legislation aimed at easing the transition from war to the workforce for Connecticut’s veterans. Drafted and advocated by the Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic, the law promotes veterans’ employment by requiring state agencies and universities to recognize veterans’ military training. The law was prompted by the recommendations of a legislative task force, and by a Connecticut Veterans Legal Center report that found veterans had to take redundant training, classes, or tests—often at their own expense—to get state-required job licenses.