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 1980 / Served to 1993

Joe Cowart Jr.

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Joe Cowart Jr. was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–1993 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cowart authored 716 published opinions for the court (1973–1993), plus 77 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: Bowman v. Kingsland Development, Inc. (104 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. 414 of these were attributed to Cowart 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
1983	Bowman v. Kingsland Development, Inc.	432 So. 2d 660	104
1982	Brewer v. State	413 So. 2d 1217	102
1974	Singletary v. State	290 So. 2d 116	55
1981	Buckner v. Allergan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.	400 So. 2d 820	50
1981	Ridley v. State	407 So. 2d 1000	49
1975	Becker v. King	307 So. 2d 855	48
1987	Bovis v. 7-Eleven, Inc.	505 So. 2d 661	39
1982	Heavener, Ogier Services, Inc. v. RW Fla. Region	418 So. 2d 1074	38
1982	Fla. Power & Light Co. v. CANAL AUTHORITY, ETC.	423 So. 2d 421	37
1990	Circle K Convenience Stores, Inc. v. Ferguson	556 So. 2d 1207	36
1985	MERRILL, LYNCH, PIERCE, ETC. v. Benton	467 So. 2d 311	35
1982	Cronebaugh v. Van Dyke	415 So. 2d 738	35
1982	State v. W. A. M.†	412 So. 2d 49	35
1983	Crigger v. Florida Power Corp.	436 So. 2d 937	33
1982	Alles v. Dept. of Professional Regulation	423 So. 2d 624	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 823 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 Joe Cowart Jr. on?: Joe Cowart Jr. 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

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13 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).