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 1945 / Served to 1969

Aquilino Lopez Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Aquilino Lopez Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1945. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1910 · age 116
Tenure: 1945–1969 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Lopez authored 5 published opinions for the court (1958–1969). Most cited: Graves v. Graves (10 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. 3 of these were attributed to Lopez 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
1959	Graves v. Graves	115 So. 2d 451	10
1969	Hertz Corp. v. Richards†	224 So. 2d 784	7
1966	Nuckols v. Nuckols	189 So. 2d 832	6
1967	Steppe v. State†	193 So. 2d 617	2
1958	Cole v. Oka†	107 So. 2d 45	2

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 was Aquilino Lopez Jr. on?: Aquilino Lopez Jr. was 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

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

24 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).