General power of courts
Applied in 12 court decisions — leading case Colonial Pipeline Co. v. Morgan (2008)
Most recently applied in Craig Robert Nunn v. Tennessee Department of Correction (October 2017)
Acts 1923, ch. 29, § 1; Shan
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(1) Courts of record within their respective jurisdictions have the power to declare rights, status, and other legal relations whether or not further relief is or could be claimed.
(2) No action or proceeding shall be open to objection on the ground that a declaratory judgment or decree is prayed for.
(3) The declaration may be either affirmative or negative in form and effect; and such declaration shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree.
Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.