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 1998 / Served to 2008

William M. Barker

Justice, Supreme Court of Tennessee

William M. Barker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1998–2008 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Supreme Court of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Barker authored 248 published opinions for the court (1998–2008), plus 4 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Burns (3,074 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. 44 of these were attributed to Barker 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
1999	State v. Burns	6 S.W.3d 453	3,074
2001	Fields v. State	40 S.W.3d 450	3,045
2000	State v. Smith	24 S.W.3d 274	1,807
2006	State v. Rice	184 S.W.3d 646	1,119
2000	Momon v. State· Concurrence†	18 S.W.3d 152	1,008
2000	State v. Hooper	29 S.W.3d 1	845
2001	Bogan v. Bogan	60 S.W.3d 721	819
1999	State v. Buggs	995 S.W.2d 102	802
1999	State v. Shirley	6 S.W.3d 243	688
2001	State v. Walton	41 S.W.3d 75	686
2007	In Re Adoption of A.M.H.	215 S.W.3d 793	673
2006	Vaughn v. State	202 S.W.3d 106	639
2001	Southern Constructors, Inc. v. Loudon County Board of Education	58 S.W.3d 706	604
2000	State v. Binette	33 S.W.3d 215	593
2004	State v. Goodwin	143 S.W.3d 771	590

Showing the 15 most-cited of 260 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 M. Barker on?: William M. Barker 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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10 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).