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 1986 / Served to 1987

James B. Sanderlin

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

James B. Sanderlin was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1929–1990
Tenure: 1986–1987 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

Howard University
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sanderlin authored 67 published opinions for the court (1984–1987). Most cited: McCloud v. State (40 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. 33 of these were attributed to Sanderlin 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
1986	McCloud v. State	491 So. 2d 1164	40
1987	Small v. Niagara MacH. & Tool Works	502 So. 2d 943	18
1987	Southern Alliance Corp. v. City of Winter Haven	505 So. 2d 489	17
1986	Campbell v. State	488 So. 2d 592	13
1987	Paschall v. State	501 So. 2d 1370	11
1986	Simmons v. State	485 So. 2d 475	11
1987	Williams v. State	505 So. 2d 478	10
1986	Rand v. State	484 So. 2d 1367	10
1984	Pollard v. State	444 So. 2d 561	9
1986	Harris v. State	495 So. 2d 243	8
1986	Hall v. State	493 So. 2d 93	8
1986	Fleming v. Barnett Bank of East Polk County	490 So. 2d 126	8
1987	Bolyea v. State	508 So. 2d 457	7
1987	Williams v. State	507 So. 2d 1171	6
1987	Young v. Simmons	506 So. 2d 434	6

Showing the 15 most-cited of 67 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 James B. Sanderlin on?: James B. Sanderlin 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.

1 year 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).