How are appellate judges elected today?
The current method for selecting appellate judges is called “The Tennessee Plan.” Under the Plan, a 17-member commission handpicks three candidates for each vacancy on the state’s appellate courts, including the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Governor must choose one of the three candidates or ask the commission to provide a new list. Judges selected by the Governor are never subject to a contested election. Instead, those who are appointed by the Governor face an uncontested retention referenda at the next state-wide election. If retained, the appointed judges are then only subject to an uncontested retention referenda only once every 8 years. Only one judge subject to this process has ever not been retained. Prior to 1971 (and for a period since then), appellate judges were elected in contested elections such as are now used for local trial judges.
Is the plan constitutional?
Tennessee Constitution states: “The judges of the Supreme Court shall be elected by the qualified voters of the state … The Judges of the Circuit and Chancery Courts, and of other Inferior Courts, shall be elected by the qualified voters of the district or circuit to which they are to be assigned” (Tenn. Const. art. VI, §§ 3, 4). A special panel of judges was appointed by a former Governor to decide if gubernatorial appointment and subsequent uncontested retention referenda met this constitutional requirement, and the appointed judges said it was permissible. Today, only Tennessee trial court judges are subject to the type of election in which a person, without approval of any commission or other elected official, can collect the signatures needed to “run for office” and be elected.
Is the public involved in the nomination of judges?
No. The judicial selection commission is comprised of a small group of just 17 persons picked by the Speakers of the state House and Senate. Ten of the 17 members must be lawyers. In addition, the votes of the commission members recommending nominees to the Governor for appointment are anonymous.
Has the plan ever been submitted to the people?
Tennessee voters explicitly rejected an “appointment and uncontested retention referenda” plan when it was one of 13 constitutional amendments placed before them in 1977. It was the only amendment to be rejected by the voters that year.
Has the plan achieved the objective
of removing politics from the judicial process?
When originally adopted in 1971, the Tennessee Plan was intended to remove politics from the judicial selection process. However, the judicial selection process remains “vastly too political,” as the Governor said in an article published on January 14, 2008, in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Whether this process has eliminated politics or simply changed the focus of the politics from voters to politicians is for each voter to decide.
What is the status?
The 107th General Assembly will have to decide whether to extend the current Tennessee Plan, modify it, or return to open, contested elections.
Election of Judges in Tennessee 
