Hon. June L. Green

Summary of the Oral History of the Honorable June L. Green

By Eva Petko Esber

Judge June L. Green’s oral history covers, with wit and uncommon candor, the full sweep of a remarkable life. It traces a childhood on the Severn River near Annapolis, Maryland, a late entry into the law after years of private-sector work, and more than two decades building a trial practice in Washington and Maryland against persistent resistance to women at the bar. Her thirty years on the federal bench brought further distinction, during which she helped transform the administration of the District Court, presided over cases that made national news, and pursued a commitment to the rehabilitation of offenders that extended well beyond the courtroom. The interviews were conducted by Elizabeth Sarah Gere, a former law clerk to Judge Green, in eight sessions between August 1997 and October 1998, largely at Judge Green’s home in Arnold, Maryland, the house in which she had been born in 1914.

Born the youngest of three sisters to a Baltimore wholesale paper merchant and his artistically gifted wife, Judge Green grew up between Arnold and Annapolis. She attended Miss Holiday’s school in Annapolis through the eighth grade, receiving four years each of Latin, French, and English under teachers who were themselves English and French nationals. She then completed her secondary education at Greenwood School near Baltimore and Annapolis High School. Having accumulated credits enough to skip a grade, she graduated at sixteen. She then plunged into Depression-era entrepreneurship with her sister Kitty, opening ‘The Little Different Shop,’ a gift shop and circulating library on Annapolis’s main circle — a venture that could not survive Depression-era realities and eventually closed. She subsequently spent more than a year as secretary and editor to Elizabeth Chesley Lewis, a Newbery Medal-winning author of children’s books, and credits that exacting editorial work with instilling habits of precision in writing that she drew upon throughout her judicial career.

Her husband, John Green, entered her life as a library card holder at the Little Different Shop, a Naval Academy midshipman she initially thought too immature for her. A turning point came when he invited her to Washington for a show and an Army-Navy dance, an evening that ended with John blowing out his mother’s tires on a Washington curb. Judge Green found she had nevertheless enjoyed herself thoroughly. They were married on September 5, 1936, at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis. Her father, overcome with emotion, arrived twenty minutes late and had to be walked down the aisle by the bride herself, talking steadily to keep him moving forward.

Her husband, John Green, entered her life as a library card holder at the Little Different Shop, a Naval Academy midshipman she initially thought too immature for her. A turning point came when he invited her to Washington for a show and an Army-Navy dance, an evening that ended with John blowing out his mother’s tires on a Washington curb. Judge Green found she had nevertheless enjoyed herself thoroughly. They were married on September 5, 1936, at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis. Her father, overcome with emotion, arrived twenty minutes late and had to be walked down the aisle by the bride herself, talking steadily to keep him moving forward.

After admission to the bar in 1943, Judge Green became what she believed was the first female claims adjuster in the United States, joining Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company after being strung along at the Department of Justice and turned away elsewhere. Her employer tested her with the worst assignments — accident scenes in difficult neighborhoods and coroners’ hearings. She tried her first case on overnight notice, with the court clerks guiding her through procedure she had never seen. Her principal mentor was Joseph Bulman, a leading plaintiffs’ attorney first encountered as opposing counsel at Lumbermens and a fast friend for decades, from whom she learned that unnecessary objection, even when sustained, can make a jury feel evidence is being kept from them. When, after five and a half years at Lumbermens, she approached Hogan & Hartson about a position, the firm told her candidly that no woman could be as good a trial lawyer as almost any man. Their candor helped her decide to open her own office. She established herself in the Washington Building, sharing a suite of offices with various attorneys over the years.  One of her office mates was Joyce Hens, another solo practitioner who, like Judge Green, practiced family law with a commitment to lessening discord.   They forged a  close and supportive friendship that continued throughout their careers.

After admission to the bar in 1943, Judge Green became what she believed was the first female claims adjuster in the United States, joining Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company after being strung along at the Department of Justice and turned away elsewhere. Her employer tested her with the worst assignments — accident scenes in difficult neighborhoods and coroners’ hearings. She tried her first case on overnight notice, with the court clerks guiding her through procedure she had never seen. Her principal mentor was Joseph Bulman, a leading plaintiffs’ attorney first encountered as opposing counsel at Lumbermens and a fast friend for decades, from whom she learned that unnecessary objection, even when sustained, can make a jury feel evidence is being kept from them. When, after five and a half years at Lumbermens, she approached Hogan & Hartson about a position, the firm told her candidly that no woman could be as good a trial lawyer as almost any man. Their candor helped her decide to open her own office. She established herself in the Washington Building, sharing a suite of offices with various attorneys over the years.  One of her office mates was Joyce Hens, another solo practitioner who, like Judge Green, practiced family law with a commitment to lessening discord.   They forged a  close and supportive friendship that continued throughout their careers.

Her path to the federal bench began when Warren Christopher, Assistant Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, called her to the Justice Department for a meeting. Summoned unexpectedly to the Senate, he asked her to ride with him to the Capitol so they could talk on the way. She assumed he wanted to appoint her to yet another bar committee. During the ride he asked probing questions about her practice, and parked outside the Senate side of the Capitol he asked whether she would like to be a federal judge, filling the seat being vacated by Judge Burnita Shelton Matthews, the first woman on the court, as she took senior status. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated her on April 11, 1968, and she was confirmed unanimously by the Senate on June 6, 1968.  She followed her good friend onto the bench by just a few months, Judge Joyce Hens Green, who was by then likewise married to a Mr. Green, but to no relation.

Judge Green was sworn in by her predecessor, Judge Matthews. Chief Judge Curran’s reception, however, was unwelcoming from the start. When she asked for help finding a parking space he told her: ‘Don’t you dare ask my assistant for anything. You’re going to have to find it yourself.’ She had no chambers for some time, borrowing whoever’s office was vacant, unable even to tell lawyers where to find her. Surprisingly, the colleague most widely expected to be hostile, Judge Hart, was the one who invited her to lunch with her colleagues, though he then said scarcely a word to her at the table for years. On the bench she moved quickly to reform the court’s administration, joining a minority of eight judges who adopted an individual calendar system, took on the criminal backlog, and abolished the central assignment office that had given counsel two weeks’ notice of trial after years of waiting.

Judge Green’s notable cases spanned the full range of the court’s docket. A civil case involving the Navy’s plan to scuttle a ship carrying nerve gas off the Florida coast generated days of testimony, a New York Times profile, and letters from angry mothers; she describes the subsequent underwater photographs purporting to show all was well with barely concealed skepticism. In a memorable criminal case she presided over the trial of Heidi Fletcher, the Deputy Mayor’s daughter, and two co-defendants charged in connection with a bank robbery in which a D.C. policeman was killed, recounting the case through a newspaper account that traced all three defendants’ backgrounds with novelistic detail. Among her most consequential matters were the Lorton Correctional Complex conditions litigation — in which she ordered an end to triple-decker beds under 300-degree steam pipes, required recognizable food, and addressed assaults on women at the Correctional Treatment Facility, retaining jurisdiction ‘for all time’ — and the farm workers case, pressing OSHA through years of appeals to require basic sanitary facilities for field workers whose life expectancy was proven to be forty-five years. Beyond the courtroom, she and John conducted a literacy program at the District Jail.

The final sessions turned to reflections on the profession. Judge Green’s views on courtroom civility were strongly held: she found ‘indulge me, Your Honor’ offensive and said so at every pre-trial; counsel did not need to ask permission to approach a witness; motions and orders only, no letters to chambers. She was equally direct about lawyers who addressed the press on courthouse steps, which she considered demeaning to the profession. Asked whether there were high-profile cases she wished she had been assigned, her answer was simple: no. Publicity, she said, was not her game at all.

The oral history of Judge June L. Green is both a work of genuine historical value and, on its own terms, a pleasure to read. It offers a vivid account of what the profession looked like for a woman of exceptional ability in mid-twentieth-century Washington, and an unusually candid account of the human texture of federal judicial service. The full oral history is available on the website of the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit.