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 1951 / Served to 1955

John E. Mathews

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

John E. Mathews was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1892–1955
Tenure: 1951–1955 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mathews authored 334 published opinions for the court (1929–1956), plus 7 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: A. R. Douglass, Inc. v. McRainey, as Admrx. (248 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. 162 of these were attributed to Mathews 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
1931	A. R. Douglass, Inc. v. McRainey, as Admrx.	137 So. 157	248
1952	State v. Town of North Miami	59 So. 2d 779	111
1952	Friedman v. Virginia Metal Products Corp.	56 So. 2d 515	105
1952	Adams v. Housing Authority of City of Daytona Beach	60 So. 2d 663	70
1954	Blackburn v. Brorein	70 So. 2d 293	57
1953	Gate City Garage v. City of Jacksonville	66 So. 2d 653	56
1953	James v. Gulf Life Ins. Co.	66 So. 2d 62	56
1951	Pickerill v. Schott	55 So. 2d 716	56
1953	City of Miami Beach v. Hogan	63 So. 2d 493	54
1954	Chastain v. Chastain	73 So. 2d 66	52
1952	North v. State	65 So. 2d 77	51
1931	Curtis v. Albritton as Cir. Judge	132 So. 677	48
1954	Bryant v. Gray	70 So. 2d 581	47
1930	Amos v. Conkling	126 So. 283	43
1929	Southworth v. State	125 So. 345	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 349 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 John E. Mathews on?: John E. Mathews 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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4 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).