It was no surprise General Sessions Judge Clarence Shattuck’s courtroom was a beehive of activity Friday. That’s standard operating procedure for the court, where many minor disputes are solved and others are moved to a higher court.
But on this day the courtroom was filled was filled with attorneys, courthouse workers and friends who had come to say good-bye to the judge who had served the court for 36 years.
Shattuck, 83, announced in February he was resigning, and Friday was his last day on the bench. He had been appointed to his post by the Hamilton County Commission upon the resignation of his predecessor, Raulton Schoolfield, in 1982 and was returned to the position by voters five times since.
Now, in 36 years, judges potentially could make a lot of enemies. But it is to the credit of the judge who grew up in Soddy-Daisy and graduated from the University of Tennessee law school that he was almost uniformly thought of as direct, fair, patient and considerate. He told the Times Free Press shortly after announcing his resignation that his long career also has allowed him to see people who once appeared before him return to tell him about how they have turned their lives around.
Further, in 2015 and 2011 Chattanooga Bar Association polls on local judges, Shattuck topped other Sessions Court judges, scoring more than 75 percent superior ratings from attorneys in the areas of being objective and unbiased, in legal ability, in good moral character, in diligence and in judicial temperament. He also scored well in similar surveys taken in 2005 and 2007.
The judge’s replacement, Gerald Webb, who becomes the first black man to hold a countywide judgeship, would do well to emulate his predecessor. The Hamilton County Commission appointed him to the position last week, and he’ll hold it until choosing whether to run for re-election in 2022 (when Shattuck’s eight-year term would have ended).
Three previous black men served as judges for Chattanooga City Court, Bennie Harris, Walter Williams and John Millican.
Webb, a defense attorney and former prosecutor, vowed that county commissioners wouldn’t regret their vote.
“I don’t like to be in the promise business,” he said, “but I promise this: You will never have any reason to doubt this vote. I will do the very best job I can. Thank you again for the opportunity and chance, and I promise I will not let you down.”
Webb’s words sound as if they could have come from his popular, plain-spoken predecessor. If he lives up to those words, he may stay on the bench as long as Shattuck did.