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 2002 / Active

James C. Hankinson

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

James C. Hankinson is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Davidson College
Florida State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hankinson authored 3 published opinions for the court (2009–2010). Most cited: Armstrong v. State (7 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2010	Armstrong v. State	46 So. 3d 589	7
2009	Carter v. State	22 So. 3d 793	5
2009	Carmack v. State, Department of Agriculture	31 So. 3d 798	4

Showing the 3 most-cited of 3 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 James C. Hankinson on?: James C. Hankinson 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.

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).