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 1983 / Served to 2003

Leander J. Shaw Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Leander J. Shaw Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida (7 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1983. He previously served on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1983–2003 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–
1983	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Education

Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Shaw authored 520 published opinions for the court (1980–2003), plus 28 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: State v. DiGuilio (2,703 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. 213 of these were attributed to Shaw 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	State v. DiGuilio	491 So. 2d 1129	2,703
1985	Albritton v. State	476 So. 2d 158	397
1992	Traylor v. State	596 So. 2d 957	375
1996	Melbourne v. State	679 So. 2d 759	356
1991	Padgett v. Dept. of Health & Rehab. Services	577 So. 2d 565	291
1999	Banks v. State	732 So. 2d 1065	258
2001	Major League Baseball v. Morsani	790 So. 2d 1071	251
1984	Dania Jai-Alai Palace, Inc. v. Sykes	450 So. 2d 1114	251
1990	Campbell v. State	571 So. 2d 415	233
2003	Clay Elec. Co-Op., Inc. v. Johnson	873 So. 2d 1182	200
1993	Ashley v. State	614 So. 2d 486	194
1996	HTP, Ltd. v. Lineas Aereas Costarricenses	685 So. 2d 1238	191
1990	Trotter v. State	576 So. 2d 691	172
1999	Wood v. State	750 So. 2d 592	170
1993	Joiner v. State	618 So. 2d 174	167

Showing the 15 most-cited of 557 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 Leander J. Shaw Jr. on?: Leander J. Shaw Jr. 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

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20 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).