Edwin Junior Peterson was born in 1930 in Gilmanton, Wisconsin. His family moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1944 due to his severe asthma. He studied music at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1951. He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. After his discharge in 1954, he studied law at the University of Oregon, earning his degree in 1957. He met Barbara Lee while in law school, and they married in 1957; Peterson later adopted her two children, and the couple had another two children. He then joined the Portland, Oregon, law firm Tooze, Kerr, Peterson, Marshall & Shenker. Peterson divorced in the late 1960s, and in 1971, he remarried to Anna M. Perrault, nee Chadwick, who had joined the law firm as a receptionist in 1968. In 1979, Governor Vic Atiyeh appointed Peterson to the Oregon Supreme Court. In 1981, he was elected chief justice, a position he held until 1991. During his time on the Oregon Supreme Court, he focused on improving the efficiency of courts and combating racial and ethnic biases in the courts. For his work, he was awarded the American Judicature Society's Herbert Harley Award in 1992. Peterson resigned from the court at the end of 1993. He later became a Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Willamette University. Peterson died in 2023.

Source: Oral history interview with Edwin J. Peterson, SR 11201, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; articles in the Oregonian, 1979-1994.