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 2006 / Active

Gary R. Wade

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Gary R. Wade is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: Since 2006 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wade authored 153 published opinions for the court (1990–2016), plus 14 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Dorantes (2,795 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. 31 of these were attributed to Wade 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
2011	State v. Dorantes	331 S.W.3d 370	2,795
2012	State of Tennessee v. Susan Renee Bise	380 S.W.3d 682	1,808
2009	State v. Hanson	279 S.W.3d 265	1,677
2010	Lee Medical, Inc. v. Paula Beecher· Dissent†	312 S.W.3d 515	990
2015	Michelle RYE Et Al. v. WOMEN’S CARE CENTER OF MEMPHIS, MPLLC Et Al.	477 S.W.3d 235	984
2012	State of Tennessee v. Christine Caudle	388 S.W.3d 273	929
2007	State v. Vasques	221 S.W.3d 514	744
2013	State of Tennessee v. James Allen Pollard	432 S.W.3d 851	654
2009	Grindstaff v. State	297 S.W.3d 208	536
2008	State v. Campbell	245 S.W.3d 331	498
2011	State v. Sisk	343 S.W.3d 60	475
2007	State v. Lewis	235 S.W.3d 136	461
2013	William H. Mansell v. Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, LLC	417 S.W.3d 393	331
2008	State of Tennessee v. Kacy Dewayne Cannon· Concurrence†	254 S.W.3d 287	309
2007	Faulkner v. State	226 S.W.3d 358	295

Showing the 15 most-cited of 179 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 is Gary R. Wade on?: Gary R. Wade is 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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19 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).