How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1978 / Active

Alan R. Schwartz

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Alan R. Schwartz is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal (102 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: Since 1978 · 48 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–
1978	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Schwartz authored 659 published opinions for the court (1977–2013), plus 133 dissents and 85 concurrences. Most cited: Little v. State (77 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 873 of these were attributed to Schwartz by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2011	Little v. State†	77 So. 3d 722	77
1979	J. H. v. State†	370 So. 2d 1219	47
1989	Hill v. Hill· Concurrence†	548 So. 2d 705	40
1995	L.A.T. v. State†	650 So. 2d 214	38
1983	State v. C.C.· Concurrence†	449 So. 2d 280	36
1981	R. A. L. v. State†	402 So. 2d 1337	35
1981	J. L. B. v. State†	396 So. 2d 761	31
2013	Menendez v. West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital, LLC· Dissent†	123 So. 3d 1178	23
2013	Kenz v. Miami-Dade County· Concurrence†	116 So. 3d 461	23
1989	B.S. v. State†	548 So. 2d 838	23
1989	E.L.S. v. State· Concurrence†	547 So. 2d 298	23
2011	Adams v. State†	76 So. 3d 367	22
1977	Mendelson v. Mendelson	341 So. 2d 811	21
1996	Paradise Plaza Condominium Ass'n v. Reinsurance Corp. of New York†	685 So. 2d 937	20
1981	Aurora Enterprises, Inc. v. State, Department of Business Regulation, Division of Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco†	395 So. 2d 604	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 879 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Alan R. Schwartz on?: Alan R. Schwartz is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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48 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).