How do judges of the Supreme Court of Tennessee reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Supreme Court of Tennessee / Joined 1993 / Served to 2006

Adolpho A. Birch Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Adolpho A. Birch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1932–2011
Tenure: 1993–2006 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Howard University
Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Birch authored 274 published opinions for the court (1994–2006), plus 33 dissents and 48 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Bland (3,458 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 100 of these were attributed to Birch by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1997	State v. Bland· Concurrence†	958 S.W.2d 651	3,458
1996	State v. Odom†	928 S.W.2d 18	1,978
2000	State v. Carruthers· Concurrence†	35 S.W.3d 516	1,277
2002	State v. Reid· Concurrence†	91 S.W.3d 247	1,120
2006	State v. Rice· Dissent†	184 S.W.3d 646	1,119
2001	Bogan v. Bogan· Concurrence†	60 S.W.3d 721	819
2001	State v. Shaffer	45 S.W.3d 553	816
1999	State v. Pettus	986 S.W.2d 540	738
1998	State v. Hall· Concurrence†	976 S.W.2d 121	732
2001	State v. Honeycutt	54 S.W.3d 762	690
1997	State v. DuBose· Dissent†	953 S.W.2d 649	689
2001	State v. Walton· Concurrence†	41 S.W.3d 75	686
1998	Win Myint and wife Patti KI. Myint v. Allstate Insurance Company	970 S.W.2d 920	685
1998	State v. Henning· Concurrence†	975 S.W.2d 290	606
2001	House v. State· Dissent†	44 S.W.3d 508	572

Showing the 15 most-cited of 355 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Tennessee reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Adolpho A. Birch Jr. on?: Adolpho A. Birch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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12 years on the Supreme Court of Tennessee. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).