WP: Supreme Court Prospect Has Unlikely Ally (Sears friends with Justice Thomas)

[usregimechange]

One day in the early 1990s, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas telephoned Leah Ward Sears to introduce himself. She was a rising star in Georgia's legal community, a relatively liberal black woman on the state's conservative Supreme Court. Thomas had read about political attacks against Sears and called to say he didn't like it.

"It affected her that he would take the time to comfort her in that situation," said Bernard Taylor, an Atlanta lawyer and longtime friend of Sears, now chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and a potential nominee to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter. "They're still friends."

Many years after that phone call, the friendship that has endured makes for one of the more intriguing subplots of President Obama's upcoming decision. In naming Souter's replacement, Obama is likely to choose a liberal jurist. Some in the civil rights community are hoping that person will be an African American, such as Sears, to soothe the lingering bitterness over the appointment of Thomas, a conservative who is the court's only black justice.

But if the choice does turn out to be Sears, the nation's first black president would be nominating someone whose closest friend on the court is the very person civil rights activists have accused of failing to represent African Americans' interests.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/09/AR2009050902519.html

[rvablue]

1. Just because they are friends, doesn't mean it will have any influence on her decissions, after all

Ginsberg and Scalia are very close friends who spend time with each other outside of the Court on vacations and stuff, IIRC. I think I'm remembering this from a 60 minutes interview I saw with Scalia but can't remember exactly where I heard/read about their friendship.

[Old Hank]

2. I don't even know why this article was written

Does the author have nothing better to do than to suggest that a person may be bad because she was once friends with a bad person?
The lady is clearly a progressive judge suited to be Souter's replacement.

[FrenchieCat]

3. I think she would be a great stealth nomination for the court.

She's done an admirable balancing act on certain issues that make her just right for the nomination, IMO.

1. She was nominated to the Georgia Supreme Court by Zell Miller (before he went crazy for the GOP...during his Clinton phase), so it can't be said that she was advanced by Crazy Liberals.

2. She appears very consistent as an ally on issues such as pro choice and Gay marriage, but has made moves that has provided her cover in both cases.

3. She's 53 years old and is retiring from the Court in June. She also just turned down a lucrative position that makes one wonder.

Sears announced in October 2008 that she will resign from the state Supreme Court at the end of June 2009 when her term as Chief Justice ends. Sears was named in January 2009 as one of five finalists to become dean of the University of Maryland School of Law. However, in February 2009, Sears withdrew her name from consideration, in order to pursue other opportunities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Ward_Sears

(by October of 2008, Obama the candidate, was already doing Supreme Court vetting....if you recall.)

4. She's a woman and a person of color.

5. She is quite accomplished and not being talked about a lot currently.

6. she's actually won ran and won elections for some of her judgeships, so she has had to be somewhat of a politician in fighting RW smears.



Some History on her....

The daughter of U.S. Army Colonel Thomas E. Sears and Onnye Jean Sears, she was born in Heidelberg, Germany, but the family eventually settled in Savannah, Georgia, where she attended and graduated from high school.

Sears was appointed by then-Mayor Andrew Young to the City of Atlanta Traffic Court in 1985. She then became a Superior Court judge in 1988 (the first African-American woman to hold that position in the state). She became a state Supreme Court justice in 1992.

Although historically a non-partisan election, the Georgia Republican Party and Georgia Christian Coalition targeted Sears for defeat in 2004. Based in large part on her record, she defeated her challenger with 62 percent of the vote.

Career History
Alston & Bird Attorneys at Law, Atlanta, GA, lawyer, 1980-1985
City Court of Atlanta, traffic court judge, 1985-1987
Fulton Superior Court, Atlanta, judge, 1988-1992
State Supreme Court of Georgia, justice, 1992-Present
Founder of Battered Women's Project of Columbus, GA

Organization Membership
National Association of Women's Judges
Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys(founding president)
Chair, Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism
Chair, Supreme Court Commission on Civil Justice
Chair, Supreme Court's Commission on Marriage, Children and Families
Georgia Tech Advisory Board
Links, Incorporated
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.


Awards
NAACP award for community service
2006 Trumpet Award-Law
2008 Honoree--Second Annual Wayne A. McCoy Memorial Historymaker's Program
2007-2009 Rosalynn Carter Fellow in Public Policy
Leadership Atlanta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Ward_Sears

In the past, opponents have branded Sears as a liberal, “activist” judge, a reputation she said was distorted by the media.

“I’ve always been labeled a liberal judge, I’ve been labeled a way liberal judge, and I’ve actually fought three hard campaigns on gay issues,” Sears said. “I thought frankly that my opinions were mainstream, and I think now they are. When I wrote them, they were more cutting edge, now they are not.”

“I also believe in ‘get married, stay married,’ which a lot of right-wing people have co-opted that as their issue,” she said. “But it’s not their issue, I thought it was my issue too. Political games are played with all kinds of issues and I don’t think issues belong to any one group.”’

Sears’ legal opinions on gay-related issues, including voting with the majority to overturn Georgia’s sodomy law, drew efforts from conservatives to unseat her. In 2004, Gov. Sonny Perdue and the Georgia Christian Coalition backed Grant Brantley in the race; Sears won easily.
http://www.sovo.com/2009/5-8/news/localnews/10070.cfm

2004-
Supreme Court Justice Leah Sears - who next year could become the high court's first female chief justice - was the biggest vote-getter of the night. She easily fended off challenger Grant Brantley, who was backed by Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue and religious conservatives, deflecting criticisms of her "activism" and allegations that she looked favorably on gay marriage.

"I think it's a good night for moderation in politics," said Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who countered Perdue's involvement in the Supreme Court race with her support for Sears.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0721-02.htm

Christensen v. State
A constitutional challenge to the Georgia sodomy law, using the Pavesich case, met with defeat in 1996 in the case of Christensen v. State. The vote of the court to uphold the sodomy law was 5-2

Separate dissents were written by Justice Leah Sears, the state’s most consistent and eloquent defender of the dignity of Gay and Lesbian people, and by Justice Carol Huntstein.

Sears criticized Thompson’s opinion for stating that what is beyond the pale of majoritarian morality also is beyond the limits of constitutional protection. If we lived in an autocracy, the majority would be correct. But such is not the case.

Sears believed that, in "the long history of human governance," the advent of democracy marked a major moral advance because of its recognition of the inherent dignity of the individual and the worth of his private life. The underlying idea that the individual has a right to rule himself in both private and public affairs was a monumental challenge to the many authoritarian conceptions of government that preceded democracy. Quite consciously, then, this country’s original social contract with its citizens recognized and gave credence to our immense variety of personal tastes and values, and granted to each citizen the right to pursue his or her own conception of the good. Under the unique American democratic scheme, government was intended to play a relatively insignificant role in the individual’s pursuit of the good.
http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/georgia.htm