As Tennesseans prepare to head to the polls on August 4, where they will vote on whether to retain the state’s five Supreme Court justices, The Tennessee Star is profiling each justice who currently sits on the bench.
Justice Roger Page was first appointed to the Court by former Governor Bill Haslam (R) in 2016. He is the Court’s newest member. In August of that year, Page was elected to serve a full term, through 2022.
Page’s background is a unique one compared to most of his counterparts.
He attended undergraduate school at the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy in Memphis, where he graduated in 1978 with a degree in pharmacy. He then became a pharmacist, and worked in that business until 1984.
But in 1984, he also graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law, with a degree in law.
Before going into private practice, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Julia Smith Gibbons from 1984 to 1985.
From 1985 to 1991, he worked in private practice in Atlanta and then in Jackson, Tennessee, before becoming the assistant attorney general for the State of Tennessee in Jackson.
He was first elected as a circuit court judge in 1998.
After that, he became an appellate judge on the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, where, as his biography notes, he wrote more than 330 appellate opinions.
He served in that position until his appointment to the state’s highest Court in 2016.
“Justice Page is President of the Howell Edmunds Jackson American Inn of Court and has been honored as a Tennessee Bar Foundation Fellow,” according to his biography. “He has also chaired the joint Tennessee Bar Association/Tennessee Judicial Conference (TJC) Bench-Bar Committee.”
“Justice Page has served on the TJC Executive Committee, the TJC Compensation and Retirement Committee and co-chaired the TJC Legislative Committee. As a trial judge, Justice Page served on the Tennessee Performance Evaluation Commission that evaluated all Tennessee appellate judges.”
After the state’s Supreme Court elections, the Court itself will be charged with choosing the state’s next attorney general, who will replace outgoing Attorney General Herbert Slatery III.
All of Tennessee’s Supreme Court justices are up for re-election in 2022.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Tennessee Supreme Court” by Thomas R Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.
