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 2007 / Served to 2014

William C. Koch Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

William C. Koch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 2007–2014 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Education

Trinity College
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Koch authored 120 published opinions for the court (1998–2015), plus 7 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: Lee Medical, Inc. v. Paula Beecher (990 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. 35 of these were attributed to Koch 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
2010	Lee Medical, Inc. v. Paula Beecher	312 S.W.3d 515	990
2008	Tennie Martin, et.al. v. Southern Railway Company, et.al.· Concurrence†	271 S.W.3d 76	715
2010	In Re Bernard T.	319 S.W.3d 586	702
2008	State v. Banks	271 S.W.3d 90	671
2008	Hannan v. Alltel Publishing Co.	270 S.W.3d 1	570
2010	State v. Hester	324 S.W.3d 1	554
2015	Edward Thomas Kendrick, III v. State of Tennessee	454 S.W.3d 450	492
2008	Konvalinka v. Chattanooga-Hamilton County Hospital Authority	249 S.W.3d 346	479
2012	Tina Marie Hodge v. Chadwick Craig	382 S.W.3d 325	417
2014	Terri Ann Kelly v. Willard Reed Kelly	445 S.W.3d 685	404
2008	State v. Rodriguez	254 S.W.3d 361	360
2012	Norman Redwing v. Catholic Bishop for the Diocese of Memphis	363 S.W.3d 436	325
2010	Abshure v. Methodist Healthcare-Memphis Hospitals	325 S.W.3d 98	306
2013	Dick Broadcasting Company, Inc. of Tennessee v. Oak Ridge FM, Inc.· Concurrence†	395 S.W.3d 653	301
2010	Ricky HARRIS v. STATE of Tennessee	301 S.W.3d 141	276

Showing the 15 most-cited of 150 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 William C. Koch Jr. on?: William C. Koch Jr. 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).