Penny J. White

Penny J. White (born May 3, 1956) is an American attorney and former judge who is on the faculty of the University of Tennessee College of Law. She was a Tennessee circuit court judge, a member of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, and a justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court before being removed from office in a judicial retention election. She is the only Tennessee judge ever to lose a judicial retention election under the Tennessee Plan. Early life and education White was born in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1956. She attended East Tennessee State University (ETSU), graduating with a B.S. degree in 1978. At ETSU she was the first female president of the Student Government Association. After graduation, she went on to study law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, where she was awarded the J.D. degree in 1981, and Georgetown University Law Center, where she was awarded an LL.M. degree in 1987. Legal and judicial career White engaged in the private practice of law in Johnson City, Tennessee, from 1981 to 1983 and from 1985 to 1990. From 1983 to 1985 she served as supervising attorney and clinical instructor in the Georgetown University Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic. Penny White impressed Justice Scalia and the Supreme Court when she appeared before them at the age of 32. The New Yorker article on Scalia note: "In a 1988 speech, Justice Harry Blackmun, who retired in 1994, recalled how Scalia had grilled a lawyer named Penny White, a thirty-two-year-old solo practitioner from Johnson City, Tennessee. He "picked on her and picked on her and picked on her, and she gave it back to him," Blackmun said. "Finally, at the end of the case we walked off, and Nino said the only thing he could say: 'Wasn't she good? Wasn't she good?' The rest of us were completely silent. We knew she was very good."