Cornelia A. Clark - Legal and Judicial Career

Legal and Judicial Career

In 1976 she returned to Nashville to study at the Vanderbilt University Law School, where she was awarded the Juris Doctorate degree in 1979. After law school, she engaged in the private practice of law with the former firm of Farris, Warfield & Kanaday, where she was the first woman to be a partner, and worked as city attorney in her home town of Franklin. In 1989 Governor Ned McWherter appointed her circuit judge for the 21st Judicial District of Tennessee, a position she held from 1989 to 1999. While engaged in the practice of law, she also taught the subject as an adjunct professor at the Vanderbilt Law School.

In May 1999 the Tennessee Supreme Court appointed Clark to the position of Director of the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts. In 2005, while working in this position, she became one of three nominees chosen by the judicial selection commission created under the Tennessee Plan for potential appointment to a vacancy on the Tennessee Supreme Court, and was selected for the office by Governor Phil Bredesen. Her Supreme Court service began in September 2005. In June 2006, the judicial retention commission recommended her for a full eight-year term on the Supreme Court. Her retention in office was approved by Tennessee voters in August 2006.

She began a two-year term as chief justice of the Supreme Court on September 1, 2010.