Marriage Quote by Leah Ward Sears

The line is polite on the surface, but it carries the calibrated force of a bench remark: a value judgment dressed up as a wish. Sears frames marriage as something that used to "count" and now doesn't, implying a measurable moral and social deficit. That verb matters. "Count" suggests legitimacy, stability, and civic standing, not merely romance. It's a quiet attempt to re-rank institutions and behaviors, elevating marriage as a public good rather than a private choice.

The most charged move is the pivot: "among African-Americans and not just in the society in general". It's an inclusion that also isolates. By singling out Black communities, Sears taps a long-running American narrative that treats Black family structure as a problem to be solved, often with more scrutiny than empathy. The subtext is familiar from decades of policy talk: marriage as the remedy for poverty, crime, educational gaps. That framing can sound pragmatic, even compassionate, but it also risks sliding into respectability politics, where structural inequities get recast as cultural shortcomings.

Coming from a judge, the statement lands differently than it would from a pundit. Judges embody the state; they preside over divorces, custody disputes, criminal sentencing, and the downstream consequences of economic precarity. Sears is positioning marriage as a stabilizing institution that courts, schools, and neighborhoods benefit from when it's widespread. The tension is that she’s advocating a social ideal while speaking from a role designed to appear neutral - which makes the remark feel both civic-minded and quietly disciplinary.