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Leah Ward Sears, said to possess an almost evangelical passion for the law, broke yet another barrier in Georgia judicial history Tuesday when she took the oath of office to become the first woman chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
A year ago, Sears won a hard-fought re-election campaign, withstanding a challenge by conservatives who called her too liberal to serve on Georgia's highest court.
But on Tuesday, before an enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowd in the state House chamber, Sears was introduced by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, who applauded her achievement.
"I am honored to accept the responsibility you vest in me today," Sears said.
The 50-year-old jurist will become the second African-American to serve as chief of the seven-member court when she takes office Friday.
Sears was sworn in by former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, who as mayor in 1982 appointed her to the City Court of Atlanta. Seven years later, Sears became Georgia's first African-American woman to be named a Superior Court judge. In 1992, then-Gov. Zell Miller appointed Sears to the state Supreme Court, where she was the first woman and youngest person to serve on the court.
Thomas, a native of Georgia, called Tuesday's swearing-in "a particularly special day and a day when my pride runs deep. . . . I never thought in my lifetime I would be able to witness a black woman as a chief justice of the state of Georgia Supreme Court."
Though Sears and Thomas are not aligned ideologically, they have been friends for more than a decade.
About a dozen years ago, Sears said Tuesday, Thomas telephoned her "out of the blue." He had read news accounts of political attacks on her and said he didn't like it, Sears recalled.
They immediately bonded and have kept in touch ever since, she said, noting they have a lot in common. Sears grew up Savannah, about 12 miles away from Thomas' home in Pin Point. They share some of the same friends.
"She's an extraordinary young woman," Thomas, 57, said after the ceremony. "She's a wonderful person."
Thomas told Sears he was confident that, when deciding cases, "you will call them as you see them."
Sears' longtime friend and former campaign manager, Atlanta lawyer Bernard Taylor, called Georgia's next chief justice "a woman made bold in an endless quest for justice," one who "combines old-fashioned values with a deep, almost evangelical passion for the law."
Sears said she would "strive mightily to uphold the independence of the judiciary."
"We must resist all temptations to intimidate judges or to otherwise ask them to answer for the hard decisions they are being required to make," she said. "The founders of this great nation of ours intended the judicial branch of government to be a separate, independent co-equal branch of government that answers not to public opinion, polls or politicians but only to the laws and the constitutions of the state of Georgia and of the United States of America."
Absent from Tuesday's ceremony was Gov. Sonny Perdue, who threw his support behind former Cobb County judge Grant Brantley in Brantley's effort to unseat Sears last year. Spokesman Derrick Dickey said the governor received an invitation to Sears' ceremony, but already had committed to attend several events in North Georgia.
Sears won the nonpartisan election to a six-year term with 62 percent of the vote. By tradition, she will serve two two-year terms as chief justice.
Staff writer James Salzer contributed to this article.
Copyright 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
