How do judges of the Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?

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

Supreme Court of Florida / Joined 1940 / Served to 1951

Alto L. Adams

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Alto L. Adams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1940. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1899–1988
Tenure: 1940–1951 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1940	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Adams authored 328 published opinions for the court (1926–1968), plus 43 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Ideal Farms Drainage District v. Certain Lands (190 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. 1 of these was attributed to Adams 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
1944	Ideal Farms Drainage District v. Certain Lands	19 So. 2d 234	190
1942	Matson v. Tip Top Grocery Company, Inc.	9 So. 2d 366	66
1949	Liquor Store v. Continental Distilling Corp.	40 So. 2d 371	62
1945	Motley v. State	20 So. 2d 798	57
1947	Peavy-Wilson Lumber Co. v. County of Brevard	31 So. 2d 483	52
1944	Eldridge v. Eldridge	16 So. 2d 163	46
1944	Protectu Awning Shutter Co. v. Cline	16 So. 2d 342	44
1941	Breeding's Dania Drug Co. v. Runyon	2 So. 2d 376	37
1946	Goodwin v. State	26 So. 2d 898	35
1941	Burdine's, Inc. v. McConnell	1 So. 2d 462	35
1946	State Ex Rel. Hawthorne v. Wiseheart· Concurrence	28 So. 2d 589	34
1940	Clark v. Kreidt· Concurrence	199 So. 333	34
1943	Digirogio v. Digirogio	13 So. 2d 596	32
1941	Dunahoo v. Bess	200 So. 541	32
1949	Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Allen	40 So. 2d 115	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 391 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 Supreme Court of Florida reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Alto L. Adams on?: Alto L. Adams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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