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 1954 / Served to 1961

John E. Swepston

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

John E. Swepston was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1894 · age 132
Tenure: 1954–1961 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Swepston authored 216 published opinions for the court (1954–1961), plus 5 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Town of Alamo v. FORCUM-JAMES COMPANY (92 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. 120 of these were attributed to Swepston 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
1959	Town of Alamo v. FORCUM-JAMES COMPANY	327 S.W.2d 47	92
1958	Wooten v. State	314 S.W.2d 1	43
1956	Kidd v. McCanless	292 S.W.2d 40	43
1956	Moore v. Cole· Concurrence†	289 S.W.2d 695	43
1957	Edwards v. Travelers Indemnity Co.	300 S.W.2d 615	41
1958	McConnell v. City of Lebanon	314 S.W.2d 12	40
1956	New York Life Insurance Co. v. Nashville Trust Co.· Dissent†	292 S.W.2d 749	39
1955	Hale v. State	281 S.W.2d 51	38
1960	Jones v. State	332 S.W.2d 662	36
1956	Rosenthal v. State	292 S.W.2d 1	35
1961	Jack M. Bass & Company v. Parker	343 S.W.2d 879	32
1959	Textile Workers Union, Local No. 513 v. Brookside Mills, Inc.	326 S.W.2d 671	31
1958	Bryson v. Bramlett	321 S.W.2d 555	29
1959	Hopper v. State†	205 Tenn. 246	28
1958	City of Elizabethton v. Carter County†	204 Tenn. 452	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 228 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 John E. Swepston on?: John E. Swepston 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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7 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).