Sears to advocate marriage

ATLANTA --- Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears announced Wednesday she will join a think tank working on strengthening marriage and the Atlanta office of a Chicago law firm when she steps down from the bench at the end of June.

Chief Justice Sears, a Savannah native, had already announced her retirement in October effective when her tenure as chief justice finishes June 30. The 53-year-old is the first woman and first black woman to serve on Georgia's highest court, and she says she still has plenty she wants to do.

The first black, female supreme court chief justice in the country, Chief Justice Sears' name had been mentioned as a possible successor to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. She said she was flattered to but would not comment further. She was not on a list of candidates identified by the Associated Press on Wednesday.

FOR NOW, Chief Justice Sears intends to devote half her time to the Institute for American Values, serving for a year in a post named for her late brother, the William Thomas Sears Distinguished Fellow in Family Law. Both her brothers were Naval Academy graduates, but Tommy Sears committed suicide in 1997 after serving in Iraq and suffering pains from his divorce.

"That's why I'm dedicating my year of service to him," she said, noting that former Gov. Roy Barnes had spent his first year after leaving office working for poor clients with a legal-aid foundation.

Chief Justice Sears, who has been divorced and later remarried, said in an interview with Morris News Service that failed relationships and children born out of wedlock account for much of the problems that wind up in court. She said family-law cases have grown from 10 percent of Georgia court dockets when Gov. Zell Miller appointed her to the Supreme Court in 1992 to 60 percent of all cases today.

"That tells you something is not going right," she said. "Our courts have to step in to be a parent."

The New York City-based, nonpartisan foundation will give her the opportunity to come up with policy ideas on personal savings and marriage, a frequent topic of hers in speeches during her term as chief justice. She will also work on a project to broaden understanding between members of various religious faiths, especially Islam and the Western religions.

She'll also focus on family law as a guest lecturer at the University of Georgia law school. There she'll teach a family-law course to about 20-25 second- and third-year students in the fall and possibly on judicial process in the spring, according to Paul Kurtz, UGA's associate dean for academic and student affairs.

She has joined Schiff Hardin law firm in Atlanta. The firm has defended major white-collar criminal cases, such as representing the Office of the Governor of Illinois, but not then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Gov. Sonny Perdue hasn't begun looking for a replacement, but will name one for the balance of her term that runs through the end of 2010, according to his spokesman Bert Brantley.