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 1974 / Served to 1980

Joe W. Henry

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Joe W. Henry was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1980
Tenure: 1974–1980 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Henry authored 201 published opinions for the court (1974–1980), plus 32 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Baxter v. Rose (3,828 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. 128 of these were attributed to Henry 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
1975	Baxter v. Rose	523 S.W.2d 930	3,828
1978	State v. Cabbage· Dissent†	571 S.W.2d 832	3,699
1975	Bob Pearsall Motors, Inc. v. Regal Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc.	521 S.W.2d 578	322
1977	Davis v. Gulf Insurance Group	546 S.W.2d 583	270
1977	Graham v. State	547 S.W.2d 531	198
1975	Cornpropst v. Sloan· Dissent†	528 S.W.2d 188	195
1976	Jerkins v. McKinney	533 S.W.2d 275	175
1974	Stiller v. State	516 S.W.2d 617	166
1979	Delk v. State· Dissent†	590 S.W.2d 435	161
1974	Teeters v. Currey	518 S.W.2d 512	160
1975	Tidwell v. Collins	522 S.W.2d 674	149
1975	McCroskey v. Bryant Air Conditioning Company	524 S.W.2d 487	148
1978	Harrison v. Schrader	569 S.W.2d 822	145
1975	State v. Black· Dissent†	524 S.W.2d 913	141
1977	Bowman v. Henard	547 S.W.2d 527	135

Showing the 15 most-cited of 246 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 Joe W. Henry on?: Joe W. Henry 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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5 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).