Tennessee

The Tennessee legislature ended its 2013 session without renewing the state’s judicial nominating commission, which screens applicants for appellate court vacancies and recommends the best qualified candidates to the governor for appointment. The commission expires on June 30, and as of July 1, there will be no process in place for filling vacancies on the supreme court, court of appeals, and court of criminal appeals.

Socially conservative legislators in Alaska have proposed a bill that would remove the judicial council’s authority to make recommendations regarding judges standing for retention. In Tennessee, legislators have proposed a bill that would allow them to reconstitute the nine-member performance evaluation commission with no judge members. It would also authorize the commission to rewrite existing evaluative criteria and to prevent judges who receive a recommendation “for replacement” from standing for retention.

The house of representatives approved with a 78-14 vote a proposed constitutional amendment that would alter the process for selecting Tennessee’s appellate judges. The senate approved the measure 29-2 in February. The legislature also approved the proposal in 2012, so it will be on the ballot in 2014.

Tennessee’s senate approved by a 29-2 vote a proposed constitutional amendment that has been nicknamed “The Founding Fathers Plan Plus.” The proposal would establish a federal selection process for appellate judges—gubernatorial appointment with confirmation by both houses of the legislature (the “plus”).

According to results of a recent Vanderbilt University poll, 44 percent of Tennessee voters want to elect supreme court justices, while 28 percent believe the governor should continue to appoint them. The legislature is expected to pursue changes to the process for selecting judges in 2013.

Three former judges recused themselves from hearing a challenge to the state’s appellate judge selection process, citing the need to preserve the integrity of the special five-member panel appointed by Governor Haslam to decide the case.

The plaintiff in a challenge to the constitutionality of the process for selecting the state's appellate judges asked two retired supreme court justices and a former federal judge to recuse themselves from a special five-member panel appointed by Governor Haslam to hear the case, alleging that as former judges "their impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

The supreme court reversed one of the revisions it made to the code of judicial conduct in January, removing a prohibition against judges making campaign contributions to political candidates. The state bar supported the move as preserving judges’ First Amendment rights, but critics argue that judges should stay out of politics.

Eleven of 12 court of appeals judges and two of five supreme court justices have recused themselves from hearing an appeal involving a constitutional challenge to the state’s process for selecting appellate judges. John Jay Hooker, who filed and lost a similar suit in the late 1990s, claims that the constitution requires judges to be elected rather than appointed and that elections should be by grand division rather than statewide.

The senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to appoint appellate judges with legislative confirmation. The proposal would give the general assembly sixty days to act on a nomination or it would automatically be confirmed. The house later approved the same measure. If approved by a two-thirds vote of the general assembly in 2013, the proposal will go before the voters in 2014.