Opinion ID: 1061025
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the residency requirement to fill a vacancy for an unexpired term of a supreme court judge who resigns

Text: The Tennessee Constitution provides limited constitutional mandates with respect to residency requirements of Supreme Court judges in this State. Article VI, Section 2 provides in pertinent part: The Supreme Court shall consist of five Judges, of whom not more than two shall reside in any one of the grand divisions of the State. Article VI, Section 3, provides as follows: The Judges of the Supreme Court shall be elected by the qualified voters of the State. The Legislature shall have power to prescribe such rules as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of section two of this article. Every Judge of the Supreme Court shall be thirty-five years of age, and shall before his election have been a resident of the State for five years. His term of service shall be eight years. The Tennessee legislature has enacted laws declaring that there are three grand divisions of the State: the Eastern, Middle, and Western, and has specified the counties of which each grand division is comprised. T.C.A. §§ 4-1-201-4-1-204. In response to the mandates of Article VI of the Tennessee Constitution, the legislature enacted T.C.A. § 16-3-101 regarding the composition of the Supreme Court: CompositionElection of judgesQualificationsConcurrence necessary for decisions.(a) The supreme court shall consist of five (5) judges, one (1) of whom shall reside in each grand division, and not more than two (2) in the same grand division. (b) Judges of the supreme court shall be elected as follows: one (1) of the supreme court judges shall be elected from each of the three (3) grand divisions and two (2) of the supreme court judges shall be elected from the state at large. Each candidate shall reside in the grand division for which the candidate is elected and the two candidates elected for the state at large shall not reside in the same grand division. (c) Each judge shall be thirty-five (35) years of age and shall, before election, have been a resident of the state for five (5) years. (d) A judge's term of office shall be eight (8) years. (e) The concurrence of three (3) of the judges is necessary to a decision in every case. Both Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution and the statutory scheme enacted under its mandate make it clear that a term of office is eight years for judges on the Supreme Court of this state. The sitting members of the Supreme Court and the positions they held when these cases were presented were as follows: Justice Lyle Reid, Western Division; Justice A.A. Birch, Jr., Middle Division; Justice E. Riley Anderson, Eastern Division; Justice Frank F. Drowota, III, State at Large (residing in the Middle Division); and Justice Penny J. White, State at Large (residing in the Eastern Division). The position on the bench at issue in these lawsuits, being the seat held by Justice White, is an at large position. In August 1990, Justice Charles O'Brien was elected to a full eight-year term as an at large judge residing in the Eastern Grand Division. He resigned in October, 1994. Pursuant to the selection procedure of the Tennessee Plan, Justice Penny White, also a resident of the Eastern Grand Division, was appointed December 17, 1994, to fill a portion of Justice O'Brien's unexpired term, to wit, until August 31, 1996. T.C.A. §§ 17-4-109; 17-4-112. The last sentence of Article VII, Section 5 of the Tennessee Constitution requires that the remaining two years of the unexpired portion of Justice O'Brien's eight-year term be filled at the next biennial election recurring more than thirty days after the vacancy occurs. The next biennial election after Justice O'Brien's resignation creating the vacancy in his unexpired eight-year term was the election held on August 1, 1996. Our ruling that the vacancy created by Justice O'Brien's resignation must be filled from the Eastern Grand Division is based on T.C.A. § 17-1-301, which reads in pertinent part: Vacancies in office.(a) Whenever a vacancy, either by death, resignation, or removal, shall occur in the office of a judge of the supreme court . . . the vacancy in such office shall be filled by the qualified voters of the whole state for judges of the supreme court . . . at the next biennial election in August, occurring more than thirty (30) days after such vacancy, and in the meantime, the governor shall appoint a person learned in the law and constitutionally qualified to discharge the duties of such office until such election can be had. (b) If a vacancy shall occur in the office of a judge of the supreme court . . . it shall be filled from the grand division of the state in which the vacancy occurs. It is noteworthy that this requirement is echoed in T.C.A. § 8-48-109, which provides: Judicial vacancies filled from same grand division.Any vacancy in the office of supreme court or appeals court judge shall be filled by a person residing in the grand division of the state in which the vacancy occurs. Appellant Laska relied on an opinion of the Attorney General (AG No. 80-153, June 20, 1980) in asserting that he was qualified as a resident of the Western Grand Division of Tennessee to, run for the office vacated by Justice O'Brien and filled in the interim by Justice White. This opinion held that a vacancy created by the death of Justice Joe Henry, an at large justice residing in the Middle Grand Division, could be filled from either the Middle Grand Division or the Western Grand Division where only one member of the court resided. After noting the relevance of T.C.A. § 17-1-301, [20] the opinion ignored the limitation in that statute to the division in which the vacancy occurred. The Attorney General's analysis pointed out in detail that filling the vacancy would not violate Article VI, Section 2 of the state constitution but offered no reason for failing to apply the residency limitation adopted by the Legislature in T.C.A. § 17-1-301(b). Without violating the constitutional residency requirement, the Legislature could easily have enacted a provision that a vacancy on the Supreme Court bench could be filled from either one of the two grand divisions of the state having only one current member, but it did not do so. Instead, it expressly provided that the vacancy be filled from the grand division of the state in which the vacancy occurs. That limitation is not in conflict with the constitutional residency requirement and is clearly within the power of the Legislature in implementing the judicial article of the constitution. See State ex rel. Cole v. City of Hendersonville, 223 Tenn. 365, 445 S.W.2d 652, at 656 (1969). It is relevant to note that, in order to comply with the constitutional residency requirement, a vacancy created by the resignation of a justice holding any of the three grand division seats must be filled by a resident of the same grand division in which the vacancy occurs. There may well be good reason for the two at large positions to remain in the same two grand divisions for the remainder of the eight-year term the people elected them to occupy. But good or bad, it is the law, and cannot be ignored by the courts of this state or the Attorney General. Appellant Laska asserts that this special court's interpretation of T.C.A. § 17-1-301 will result in freezing the at large seats on the Supreme Court in Middle and East Tennessee. Our interpretation is that the two statutes limiting residency to the grand division where the vacancy occurs, T.C.A. §§ 8-48-109 and 17-1-301 apply only to biennial elections to fill unexpired terms. A vacancy created by the rejection of an incumbent justice seeking a full eight year term can be filled from one of two grand divisions, subject to the residency requirements of Article VI, Section 2, Tennessee Constitutionthe division wherein the rejected judge resides or the grand division where only one judge resides. The result articulated in the 1980 opinion of the Office of the Attorney General is clearly erroneous. The unequivocal mandate of the Legislature expressed in T.C.A. § 17-1-301(b), as well as T.C.A. § 8-48-109, governs the residency requirement for those who would seek to fill the unexpired term resulting from the death, resignation or removal of a Supreme Court Justice, whether the vacating justice holds a grand division position or a state at large position. There are statutorily only three grand divisions in this state; there is no at large grand division, and a judge vacating his or her office is necessarily a resident of one of the three grand divisions of the state. Thus, a vacancy in one of the at large positions for an unexpired term must be filled by a resident of the grand division in which the vacancy occurs, which is that in which the at large judge resides.