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 1988 / Served to 2010

Gerald B. Cope Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Gerald B. Cope Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1988–2010 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Yale University
Florida State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cope authored 168 published opinions for the court (1989–2010), plus 43 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: G.C. v. State (37 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. 265 of these were attributed to Cope 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
1990	G.C. v. State†	560 So. 2d 1186	37
2008	State v. Jardines· Concurrence†	9 So. 3d 1	21
1989	E.J. v. State· Concurrence†	554 So. 2d 578	21
2010	Simon v. State†	47 So. 3d 883	18
2010	Park Adult Residential Facility, Inc. v. Dan Designs, Inc.· Dissent†	36 So. 3d 811	14
2010	Weingrad v. Miles· Dissent†	29 So. 3d 406	14
2010	Coral Reef Drive Land Development, LLC v. Duke Realty Ltd. Partnership· Dissent†	45 So. 3d 897	13
2010	Florida Department of Children & Families v. Adoption of X.X.G.†	45 So. 3d 79	12
2009	Weatherly v. Louis· Dissent†	31 So. 3d 803	12
2009	Hialeah Automotive, LLC v. Basulto†	22 So. 3d 586	12
2009	Hazuri v. State· Dissent†	23 So. 3d 857	10
2009	Village of Doral Place Ass'n v. RU4 Real, Inc.†	22 So. 3d 627	10
2010	R.O. v. State· Dissent†	46 So. 3d 124	9
2008	Kramer v. Von Mitschke-Collande· Dissent†	5 So. 3d 689	9
2010	Roosevelt v. State†	42 So. 3d 293	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 267 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 Gerald B. Cope Jr. on?: Gerald B. Cope Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

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22 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).