Tennessee Court Records

Tennessee Court Record Lookup

Tennessee TN court records are a public document and can be viewed by performing Tennessee court records search. In Tennessee, these documents are important for enforcing a court’s decision, such as a name change, child support payments, or enrolling in a court-ordered treatment program.

Limited Jurisdiction Courts

Courts that handle only municipal code violations (municipal court), specific categories of cases such as juvenile or probate, or are geographically limited (general sessions courts) are considered limited jurisdiction courts. There are also 62 specialty venues called problem-solving courts such as drug courts that keep nonviolent and first-time offenders out of the legal system. These Tennessee courthouses connect defendants with treatment options as well. Limited jurisdiction courts do not hold jury trials and are often run by elected or appointed magistrates rather than judges.

Trial Courts

In Tennessee, trials are held by a circuit court, chancery, and criminal courts. The first two have general jurisdiction over civil cases, such as child support in Tennessee and criminal matters but criminal courts are restricted to criminal proceedings.

Anyone can access Tennessee court records online from trial and appellate courts via Tennessee court case lookup. If an official document from the case is required it should be requested through the clerk of the court where the case was heard. Some records, including juvenile cases, may not be available due to confidentiality laws. But you can get a lot of information through Recordsfinder.com's Tennessee criminal records search tool.

There were almost 207,000 cases filed in mentioned courts in a recent year.

Appellate courts

The state’s intermediate court of appeals is divided into civil and criminal departments. These hear appeals of cases from lower courts.

The state supreme court hears appeals from lower courts on a selective basis as well as appeals of worker’s compensation agency decisions. This court also advises on the constitutionality of state laws.

Federal court

Each state has a division of U.S. District Court which has jurisdiction over bankruptcy petitions, violations of federal law, and multi-state lawsuits, among other things. Records of these courtrooms can be searched online by conducting Tennessee court record lookup.

Tennessee Notable Court Cases

In 1925, in State of Tennessee v. Scopes, a teacher by the name of John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution and fined $100. Though the Supreme Court overturned his conviction and fine, the law remained on the books for years that teachers were not allowed to teach evolution in schools.

In 1914, Methodist Episcopal Church, South v. Board of Vanderbilt University determined that the university was not controlled by the Methodist denomination, but rather its trustees. This school was started by the Southern Methodist church. The Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling that the denomination, in fact, controlled the university. Had the original ruling stood its ground, it likely would have remained a small institution and failed to become the large medical center we know today.

Baker v. Carr went down in history as the beginning of the movement known as "'one man, one vote." This case originated because Charles Baker, the resident of Memphis, sued Carr (Tennessee Secretary of State) in an attempt to influence a rewriting of district lines. This was due to a major shift in population in the state from rural to urban areas. Though the Tennessee Supreme Court determined it couldn't tell the Legislature to rewrite the lines, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against that decision. This case resulted in nearly every federal district lines in the U.S. to be redrawn by the state legislatures.