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 1975 / Served to 1979

Joseph Woodrow Hatchett

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Joseph Woodrow Hatchett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1975–1979 · 4 yrs
Education: Florida Agricultural and Mechanical 1954

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

B.A.

1954

Judicial Record

In our data, Hatchett authored 22 published opinions for the court (1976–1979), plus 5 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Interest of S. R. v. State (67 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. 32 of these were attributed to Hatchett 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
1977	Interest of S. R. v. State†	346 So. 2d 1018	67
1978	Florida Board of Bar Examiners· Concurrence†	364 So. 2d 454	35
1977	Spenkelink v. State· Concurrence†	350 So. 2d 85	27
1977	S.H.B. v. State· Dissent†	355 So. 2d 1176	19
1979	State v. Paffy†	369 So. 2d 340	5
1978	Pinellas County v. Nelson†	362 So. 2d 279	5
1976	Bowers v. Bowers†	326 So. 2d 172	4
1979	Fieldhouse v. Public Health Trust†	374 So. 2d 476	3
1978	Cradduck v. State†	360 So. 2d 416	2
1978	The Florida Bar· Concurrence†	358 So. 2d 1363	2
1977	Cardenas v. Smathers· Dissent†	351 So. 2d 21	2
1977	Reinhardt v. Schwab†	343 So. 2d 837	2
1976	Crossley v. State†	334 So. 2d 17	2
1976	American Sightseeing Tours, Inc. v. Bevis†	326 So. 2d 437	2
1978	Tamarac Utilities, Inc. v. Hawkins†	364 So. 2d 437	1

Showing the 15 most-cited of 32 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 Joseph Woodrow Hatchett on?: Joseph Woodrow Hatchett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

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.

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).