Leah Ward Sears
American lawyer
Leah Ward Sears (née Leah Jeanette Sears; born June 13, 1955) is an American jurist and former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Sears was the first African-American female chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States. When she was first appointed as justice in 1992 by Governor Zell Miller, she became the first woman and youngest person to sit on Georgia's Supreme Court.
Early life and education
Leah Ward Sears was born in Heidelberg, Germany, to United States Army Colonel Thomas E. Sears and Onnye Jean Sears. The family eventually settled in Savannah, Georgia, where she attended and graduated from Beach High School.
Sears received a B.S. from Cornell University in 1976, her Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law in 1980, and a Master of Laws from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1995. At Cornell, Sears became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Quill and Dagger society. She holds honorary degrees from Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, LaGrange College, Piedmont College, and Spelman College.
Professional career
After graduating from law school, Sears was an attorney from 1980 until 1985 with the Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird. For many years she was also an adjunct Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law.
“Leah Ward Sears” enters the record as american lawyer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Leah, Ward and Sears can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Leah Ward Sears” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Leah, Ward and Sears provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6509265. VIAF identifies the subject as 51071593. The Library of Congress control number is n2003123632. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1992, 1976 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leah Ward Sears” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.