This year, SCAD and Paula Wallace inducted five new women into the Savannah Women of Vision, a program that celebrates key female figures whose ideas, leadership and service have shaped the community of Savannah. This weekly column will attempt to share a little more of the stories behind each of the fifteen women whose gold portraits hang on either side of the Arnold Hall Theater.
Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears’s father was an army colonel and so her family was stationed throughout the world, including Heidelberg, Germany, where Leah was born on June 13, 1955. The family continued to move throughout her childhood until, eventually, they settled in Savannah when Leah was 16. She attended Savannah High School, where she was the first black cheerleader, before she transferred to the Beach Institute and graduated a year early.
She received a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University in 1976 and then went on to graduate from the Emory University law school in Atlanta in 1980. She stayed in Atlanta and worked for the Alston and Bird law firm as an attorney for two years until Andrew Young, the mayor of Atlanta, appointed her to the city’s Traffic Court. It was during this time that she gained her experience and appreciation for court administration.
In 1988, she became the youngest person elected to a superior court seat in Georgia when she served as the Fulton County Superior Court Judge. Four years later, Georgia governor Zell Miller selected her as one of a select few to interview for an interim seat on the state Supreme Court. She emphasized her experience in the Traffic Court and Superior Court and urged that age should be a factor of diversity in the high court. Governor Miller approved but before the position could officially be hers, she had to win an election against former Clayton County Superior Court Judge Stephan Boswell. When she succeeded, she became the first woman in Georgia to win a contested statewide election. During her time serving, she befriended Georgia native and U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In 2005, her fellow justices elected her to be a chief justice, making her the first African-American female chief justice on any United States supreme court.
She also served as the chair of the Judicial Council of Georgia. During her time, she denounced the electric chair as a humane form of execution and affirmed the decision to overturn a state law against sodomy. She also founded the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and the Columbus branch of the Battered Women’s Project. In 2009, she resigned from the supreme court to return to more hands-on law work by joining the Schiff Hardin law firm in Atlanta and becoming a member of Emory University’s Board of Trustees. Before Sonia Sotomayor was appointed, Leah was considered as a potential replacement for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter when he announced his retirement.
Among her many awards are the Georgia Trend “100 Most Influential Georgians,” the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Woman Layer of Achievement, the Georgia Coalition of Black Women’s Excellence in Public Service Award and an honorary doctor of law degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta.
“You can do so much with law if it’s not just about making a new dollar bill,” she told the St. Joseph’s Candler Media Center. “It’s about changing lives and doing good for people.”
Elena Burnett is the Editor-in-Chief of District. She’s a writing major who will graduate in 2019.
