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 1969 / Served to 1992

George F. McCanless

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

George F. McCanless was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1904–1992
Tenure: 1969–1992 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, McCanless authored 102 published opinions for the court (1969–1974), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. v. Travelers Indemnity Co. (99 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. 65 of these were attributed to McCanless 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
1973	Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. v. Travelers Indemnity Co.	493 S.W.2d 465	99
1973	Ellithorpe v. Ford Motor Company	503 S.W.2d 516	79
1972	State v. Netto	486 S.W.2d 725	48
1972	Arthur v. State	483 S.W.2d 95	44
1972	Bowen v. State	488 S.W.2d 373	35
1970	Overby v. Overby	457 S.W.2d 851	35
1970	Darby v. Superior Supply Company· Dissent†	458 S.W.2d 423	34
1974	State v. Hailey	505 S.W.2d 712	32
1973	Shea v. Sargent	499 S.W.2d 871	30
1970	Draper v. Great American Insurance Company	458 S.W.2d 428	30
1973	Hixson v. Stickley	493 S.W.2d 471	27
1972	Shoffner v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.	494 S.W.2d 756	27
1974	West v. Tennessee Housing Development Agency	512 S.W.2d 275	24
1974	Heath v. Cornelius†	511 S.W.2d 683	23
1973	State v. Jackson	503 S.W.2d 185	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 103 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 George F. McCanless on?: George F. McCanless 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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22 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).