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 1961 / Served to 1977

John S. Rawls

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

John S. Rawls was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1961–1977 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rawls authored 599 published opinions for the court (1961–1977), plus 58 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: American Bankers Life Assur. Co. of Fla. v. Williams (106 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. 400 of these were attributed to Rawls 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
1968	American Bankers Life Assur. Co. of Fla. v. Williams	212 So. 2d 777	106
1974	Brown v. Brown	300 So. 2d 719	75
1964	Florida Investment Enterprises, Inc. v. Kentucky Co.	160 So. 2d 733	58
1963	Brooks v. Anastasia Mosquito Control District	148 So. 2d 64	48
1968	Travelers Indemnity Company v. Powell	206 So. 2d 244	46
1966	Standard Accident Insurance Company v. Gavin	184 So. 2d 229	46
1975	Saunders v. State	319 So. 2d 118	41
1962	Lewis v. Florida State Board of Health	143 So. 2d 867	41
1977	Bryant v. Jax Liquors	352 So. 2d 542	38
1964	Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. JC Penney Co.	166 So. 2d 211	38
1970	St. Regis Paper Company v. State	237 So. 2d 797	36
1962	American Fire and Casualty Company v. Davis	146 So. 2d 615	35
1969	Ford Motor Company v. Pittman	227 So. 2d 246	32
1977	Ellis v. Golconda Corp.	352 So. 2d 1221	31
1965	Davis v. United States Fidel. & G. Co. of Baltimore, Md.	172 So. 2d 485	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 676 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 John S. Rawls on?: John S. Rawls 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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16 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).