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 1969 / Served to 1987

James C. Adkins Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

James C. Adkins Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–1994
Tenure: 1969–1987 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Adkins authored 803 published opinions for the court (1928–1987), plus 33 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Applegate v. Barnett Bank of Tallahassee (1,882 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. 209 of these were attributed to Adkins 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
1979	Applegate v. Barnett Bank of Tallahassee	377 So. 2d 1150	1,882
1973	State v. Dixon	283 So. 2d 1	745
1973	Hoffman v. Jones	280 So. 2d 431	727
1985	Moore v. Morris	475 So. 2d 666	456
1974	Lynch v. State	293 So. 2d 44	390
1976	West v. Caterpillar Tractor Company, Inc.	336 So. 2d 80	382
1983	Mercer v. Raine	443 So. 2d 944	263
1985	Johnson v. Davis	480 So. 2d 625	259
1982	Whitten v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co.	410 So. 2d 501	242
1986	State v. Mischler	488 So. 2d 523	241
1969	Board of Public Instruction of Broward Cty. v. Doran	224 So. 2d 693	229
1973	Kluger v. White	281 So. 2d 1	201
1970	Sanford v. Rubin	237 So. 2d 134	197
1971	State v. Ashby	245 So. 2d 225	186
1974	Town of Palm Beach v. Gradison	296 So. 2d 473	185

Showing the 15 most-cited of 854 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 James C. Adkins Jr. on?: James C. Adkins Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

Sources

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

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18 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).