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 1998 / Former Justice

R. Fred Lewis

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

R. Fred Lewis was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 1998 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lewis authored 292 published opinions for the court (1926–2019), plus 42 dissents and 50 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Cotton (311 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. 252 of these were attributed to Lewis 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
2000	State v. Cotton	769 So. 2d 345	311
2000	Grant v. State	770 So. 2d 655	287
2000	Ivey v. Allstate Ins. Co.	774 So. 2d 679	257
2017	James Ernest Hitchcock v. State of Florida· Concurrence†	226 So. 3d 216	253
2003	Swire Pacific Holdings, Inc. v. Zurich Ins. Co.	845 So. 2d 161	205
2000	Murphy v. International Robotic Systems, Inc.	766 So. 2d 1010	195
2004	Reeves v. Fleetwood Homes of Florida, Inc.	889 So. 2d 812	173
2009	Wallace v. Dean	3 So. 3d 1035	168
2007	United States Fire Insurance v. J.S.U.B., Inc.· Concurrence†	979 So. 2d 871	158
2003	PNR, Inc. v. Beacon Property Management, Inc.	842 So. 2d 773	150
2002	Gracey v. Eaker	837 So. 2d 348	150
2002	Siegle v. Progressive Consumers Ins. Co.	819 So. 2d 732	147
2009	E.A.R. v. State†	4 So. 3d 614	141
2014	Frank Special v. West Boca Medical Center· Concurrence†	160 So. 3d 1251	135
2013	Diamond Aircraft Industries, Inc. v. Horowitch†	107 So. 3d 362	125

Showing the 15 most-cited of 385 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 R. Fred Lewis on?: R. Fred Lewis 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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27 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).