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 2006 / Active

C Alan Lawson

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

C Alan Lawson is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal (102 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Clemson University
Florida State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lawson authored 219 published opinions for the court (2006–2016), plus 9 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Christian v. State (29 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. 119 of these were attributed to Lawson 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
2012	Christian v. State†	84 So. 3d 437	29
2013	Horsley v. State†	121 So. 3d 1130	26
2013	Knight v. State†	107 So. 3d 449	25
2009	Ortiz v. State· Concurrence†	24 So. 3d 596	25
2008	Luckey v. State	979 So. 2d 353	23
2008	Vesta Const. v. Lotspeich & Associates	974 So. 2d 1176	22
2011	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Curran· Concurrence†	83 So. 3d 793	21
2011	Burton v. State· Concurrence†	125 So. 3d 788	21
2006	Phenion Development Group, Inc. v. Love	940 So. 2d 1179	20
2011	Lopez v. State· Concurrence†	68 So. 3d 332	17
2010	T & W DEVELOPERS, INC. v. Salmonsen· Dissent†	31 So. 3d 298	16
2011	T.M.H. v. D.M.T.· Dissent†	79 So. 3d 787	15
2010	Samples v. Florida Birth-Related Neurological	40 So. 3d 18	15
2007	Leesburg Cancer Center v. Leesburg Regional	972 So. 2d 203	15
2007	Nu-Vision, LLC v. CORPORATE CONVENIENCE	965 So. 2d 232	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 247 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 C Alan Lawson on?: C Alan Lawson 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

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

20 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).