Nashville lawyer Todd Pinckley will be presented with the prestigious Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing on June 18 during the Tennessee Bar Association’s (TBA) annual convention in Memphis. The award will be presented at the annual Lawyers Lunch, which will be held in-person and livestreamed.

The award was established nearly 40 years ago and is given each year to the lawyer “who writes the most outstanding article that is published in the ... Tennessee Bar Journal for the preceding year." Named for Henry, a former chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court known for his forthright and clear writing, the purpose of the award is to encourage practicing Tennessee lawyers to write scholarly yet practical articles that will be of maximum benefit to the members of our bar.”  

This year’s winning article is “The Right to Remain Silent: Law Enforcement and the Duty to Intervene,” which was published in the November/December 2020 issue. 

The Joe Henry Award is chosen by a committee made up of the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court or his designee, deans of some of the state’s law schools or their designees — on a rotating basis — and the president of the Tennessee Bar Association. This year the judges were Katharine Traylor Schaffzin, Dean of the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law; Tennessee Court of Appeals Judge Neal McBrayer, who was the designee of Chief Justice Jeffrey Bivins; and TBA President Michelle Greenway Sellers of Jackson. 

Pinckley is an in-house counsel for the National Association of State Boards of Accounting (NASBA) in Nashville, where he focuses on regulatory and administrative law. A native of Huntsville, Alabama, he relocated to Nashville after graduating from the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis. Since law school, he has held positions with multiple agencies in state and local government across Tennessee, including serving as a prosecutor for the Tennessee Department of Health and as an administrative judge with the Division of TennCare. He also served as the first attorney-advisor for the Metro Nashville Community Oversight Board which investigates allegations of police misconduct.

The Tennessee Bar Association was founded in 1881. Its membership represents the entire spectrum of the legal profession in Tennessee and beyond. The TBA is open to all licensed attorneys in good standing, and it is dedicated to enhancing fellowship and professionalism among the members of Tennessee’s legal community.