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 1994 / Served to 1996

Penny J. White

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

Penny J. White was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1956 · age 70
Tenure: 1994–1996 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

East Tennessee State University

Judicial Record

In our data, White authored 29 published opinions for the court (1994–1996), plus 5 dissents. Most cited: McCall v. Wilder (633 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. 7 of these were attributed to White 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
1995	McCall v. Wilder	913 S.W.2d 150	633
1996	Meighan v. U.S. Sprint Communications Co.	924 S.W.2d 632	329
1996	McClung v. Delta Square Ltd. Partnership	937 S.W.2d 891	301
1996	Cohen v. Cohen	937 S.W.2d 823	288
1995	Richardson v. Tennessee Board of Dentistry	913 S.W.2d 446	288
1996	State v. Trusty	919 S.W.2d 305	235
1996	State v. Smith· Dissent†	933 S.W.2d 450	217
1996	State v. Kissinger	922 S.W.2d 482	212
1995	State v. Palmer	902 S.W.2d 391	169
1996	State v. Wood· Dissent†	924 S.W.2d 342	137
1995	Wyatt v. A-Best, Company	910 S.W.2d 851	125
1996	Aaby v. Strange· Dissent†	924 S.W.2d 623	109
1996	Woodson v. Porter Brown Limestone Co.	916 S.W.2d 896	109
1995	State v. Turner	913 S.W.2d 158	92
1996	McClellan v. Board of Regents of the State University	921 S.W.2d 684	91

Showing the 15 most-cited of 34 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 Penny J. White on?: Penny J. White 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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2 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).