Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state)

This article is about the highest court of the U.S. state of Georgia. For the highest court of the country of Georgia, see Supreme Court of Georgia (country).

Supreme Court of Georgia
Seal of the Supreme Court
Established	1841
Country	Georgia, United States
Location	Atlanta, Georgia
Authorized by	Georgia Constitution
Decisions are appealed to	Supreme Court of the United States
Website	http://www.gasupreme.us/
Chief Justice
Currently	Hugh P. Thompson
Since	2013

The Supreme Court of Georgia is the highest judicial authority of the US state of Georgia. The court was established in 1845 as a three-member panel. Since 1896, the justices (increased in number to six, and then to seven in 1945) have been elected by the people, and today those elections are non-partisan. Three of the state's seven sitting Justices were re-elected, all unopposed, in 2012.

The first Chief Justice of the Court was Joseph Henry Lumpkin, who was appointed in 1863. There have been 27 Chief Justices, and the current Chief Justice of the Court is Hugh Thompson.

Justices

Name	Elected	Term expires
Robert Benham	1989	2014
Carol W. Hunstein	1992	2018
Hugh P. Thompson (Chief Justice)	1994	2018
Harris Hines (Presiding Justice)	1995	2014
Harold Melton	2005	2018
David Nahmias	2009	2015
Keith R. Blackwell	2012	2015

Bar admissions

The Supreme Court of Georgia is unusual among state high courts in that it does not admit new lawyers to the state bar. Instead, new lawyers are admitted to practice by the superior court of a county where they live or wish to practice. The new lawyers must separately seek admission to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.

See also

• Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Georgia
• Justices of the Supreme Court of Georgia
• Fiat justitia ruat caelum
• State Bar of Georgia
• Georgia Court of Appeals
• Courts of Georgia

References

• History of the Supreme Court of Georgia (accessed February 17, 2014)

Huebner, Timothy. The Southern Judicial Tradition: State Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790-1890. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1999.

External links

• Website of the Supreme Court of Georgia