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 2005 / Former Justice

Cornelia A. Clark

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Cornelia A. Clark was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 2005 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Clark authored 200 published opinions for the court (2006–2021), plus 1 dissent and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Carter (1,411 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. 19 of these were attributed to Clark 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
2008	State v. Carter	254 S.W.3d 335	1,411
2015	Michelle RYE Et Al. v. WOMEN’S CARE CENTER OF MEMPHIS, MPLLC Et Al.†	477 S.W.3d 235	984
2016	In Re Carrington H.	483 S.W.3d 507	732
2010	In Re Angela E.	303 S.W.3d 240	623
2010	Sneed v. Board of Professional Responsibility	301 S.W.3d 603	607
2010	State v. Majors	318 S.W.3d 850	573
2008	Pylant v. State	263 S.W.3d 854	522
2011	Gonsewski v. Gonsewski	350 S.W.3d 99	482
2013	Andrew K. Armbrister v. Melissa H. Armbrister	414 S.W.3d 685	446
2017	In Re Gabriella D.	531 S.W.3d 662	399
2012	State of Tennessee v. Carl J. Wagner	382 S.W.3d 289	399
2007	State v. Bledsoe	226 S.W.3d 349	379
2011	Wright Ex Rel. Wright v. Wright	337 S.W.3d 166	359
2007	Finch v. State	226 S.W.3d 307	358
2010	State v. Phelps	329 S.W.3d 436	344

Showing the 15 most-cited of 207 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 Cornelia A. Clark on?: Cornelia A. Clark 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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20 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).