I don’t like labels such as “conservative” or “family-values,” but I think this article from the National Law Journal makes a good point about our colleague Justice Leah Ward Sears as a prospective member of the U.S. Supreme Court:
While Sears is certainly respected on the left, she also holds certain conservative credentials. The first of these credentials is her stance on the role of marriage and family in society. In an article in the Fulton County Daily Report [an NLJ affiliate], Sears is quoted as saying, “If we can’t do something about family dysfunction, we can’t do much about crime.” In her own 2006 Washington Post essay, Sears concedes that “many hard-working single parents do an excellent job of raising children,” but goes on to argue that considering “the decline of marriage” inevitable “means giving up on far too many of our children.” This is not the traditional leftist rhetoric but that of a family-values candidate, which is right in line with her involvement in the Institute for American Values, which strives for “an increase in the proportion of U.S. children growing up with their two married parents” and a “renewal of the ethic of thrift and a decline in the culture of debt and waste.” Being a supporter of such views should aid in endearing her with both sides of the aisle, thus making more amicable the potentially contentious battle over the next Supreme Court appointment.
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