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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee / Joined 1995 / Served to 2014

Holly M. Kirby

Judge, Court of Appeals of Tennessee

Holly M. Kirby was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1995–2014 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Court of Appeals of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kirby authored 808 published opinions for the court (1995–2017), plus 2 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Keisling v. Keisling (169 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. 25 of these were attributed to Kirby 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
2005	Keisling v. Keisling	196 S.W.3d 703	169
2005	Watson v. Watson	196 S.W.3d 695	160
2011	State, Department of Children's Services v. Tikindra G.	347 S.W.3d 188	101
2006	Chaffin v. Ellis	211 S.W.3d 264	99
2009	Watson v. Watson	309 S.W.3d 483	82
2008	State, Department of Children's Services v. Mims	285 S.W.3d 435	82
2010	Belcher v. Christy C.	384 S.W.3d 731	77
2008	Doe v. Catholic Bishop for the Diocese of Memphis	306 S.W.3d 712	73
2012	In re S.J.†	387 S.W.3d 576	67
2009	Lamar Advertising Co. v. By-Pass Partners	313 S.W.3d 779	67
2009	Massey v. Casals	315 S.W.3d 788	65
2008	State, Department of Children's Services v. Estes	284 S.W.3d 790	60
2004	Levy v. Franks	159 S.W.3d 66	58
2012	Robert Thomas Edmunds v. Delta Partners, L.L.C.· Concurrence†	403 S.W.3d 812	56
2010	GuestHouse International, LLC v. Shoney's North America Corp.	330 S.W.3d 166	54

Showing the 15 most-cited of 818 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 Court of Appeals of Tennessee reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Holly M. Kirby on?: Holly M. Kirby was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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