University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Penny White has earned the Governor’s Award from the Knoxville Bar Association.
The Governors’ Award is given annually to a lawyer who has brought distinction and honor to the legal profession and who has consistently and generously served the Knoxville Bar Association and Knoxville community.
Bill Vines, who presented the award on behalf of the association, said White was selected as the award recipient because of her passion for the law and her “outstanding and note-worthy achievements.”
“Penny is truly deserving of our Association’s highest honor,” he said. She is “an exemplary attorney and a paragon of enduring, faithful, and distinguished service.”
White is the Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law at the UT College of Law and is director of the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. She served as a Circuit Judge in Tennessee’s First Judicial Circuit beginning in 1990, was appointed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in 1992, and to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1994.
White earned her J.D. from the University of Tennessee and a masters of law degree from Georgetown University.