Tennessee Plan

The Tennessee Plan is a system used to appoint and elect appellate court judges in Tennessee. It is largely patterned after the Missouri Plan, and an earlier version in Tennessee was called the Modified Missouri Plan. At the end of every judge's eight-year term following a judicial appointment to the highest courts, retention elections are held, which have the option of whether each judge shall be retained through a yes-no option. This system applies to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals.

In November 2014, a referendum on formally adopting the Tennessee Plan as an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution, clarifying its status, was held, and the plan's provisions were formally added to the Constitution. That constitutional amendment modified the previous statutory system in that the governor can now select his own nominees to the courts without the input from a commission, and that nominees must be confirmed or disapproved by the General Assembly, which must vote whether to do so within 60 days of the nominee's selection if it is in session, and within 60 days of the convening of the next session if it is not in session at the time of the appointment, and if no vote is taken within this deadline, the nominees are considered to have been confirmed by default.^[1]