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 1987 / Served to 1994

Charles H. O'Brien

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Charles H. O'Brien was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–2007
Tenure: 1987–1994 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Brien authored 68 published opinions for the court (1988–1994), plus 6 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Hodges v. S.C. Toof & Co. (1,138 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. 76 of these were attributed to O'Brien 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
1992	Hodges v. S.C. Toof & Co.· Concurrence†	833 S.W.2d 896	1,138
1993	State v. Ballard†	855 S.W.2d 557	786
1990	State v. Pruett†	788 S.W.2d 559	771
1994	Harris v. State†	875 S.W.2d 662	415
1993	Otis v. Cambridge Mutual Fire Insurance Co.†	850 S.W.2d 439	371
1994	State v. Brimmer†	876 S.W.2d 75	239
1993	State v. Smith†	857 S.W.2d 1	234
1990	State v. Adkins†	786 S.W.2d 642	216
1990	State v. Boyd†	797 S.W.2d 589	185
1993	Carson Creek Vacation Resorts, Inc. v. State, Department of Revenue†	865 S.W.2d 1	184
1994	State v. Hutchison†	898 S.W.2d 161	182
1993	Taylor v. Taylor· Dissent†	849 S.W.2d 319	157
1991	State v. Bates†	804 S.W.2d 868	137
1988	State v. Irick†	762 S.W.2d 121	120
1989	Tenn-Tex Properties v. Brownell-Electro, Inc.†	778 S.W.2d 423	118

Showing the 15 most-cited of 76 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 Charles H. O'Brien on?: Charles H. O'Brien 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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7 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).