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 1925 / Served to 1948

Rivers H. Buford

Justice, Supreme Court of Florida

Rivers H. Buford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, who joined the court in 1925. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1878–1959
Tenure: 1925–1948 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1925	Supreme Court of Florida	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Buford authored 2,275 published opinions for the court (1925–1948), plus 281 dissents and 113 concurrences. Most cited: Pompano Horse Club, Inc. v. State Ex Rel. Bryan (123 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. 24 of these were attributed to Buford 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
1927	Pompano Horse Club, Inc. v. State Ex Rel. Bryan· Dissent	111 So. 801	123
1944	Cason v. Baskin· Dissent	20 So. 2d 243	117
1937	Yates v. Ball· Dissent	181 So. 341	112
1925	Moore v. Stevens· Dissent	106 So. 901	100
1933	Frazier v. Frazier· Dissent	147 So. 464	83
1943	Brown v. State	13 So. 2d 458	74
1927	Ex parte Amos· Dissent†	93 Fla. 5	71
1946	Miami Water Works Local No. 654 v. City of Miami· Dissent	26 So. 2d 194	70
1940	Fidelity Casualty Co. of New York v. Moore· Dissent	196 So. 495	70
1947	Joyner v. State	30 So. 2d 304	69
1927	Ex Parte Amos· Dissent	112 So. 289	68
1942	Matson v. Tip Top Grocery Company, Inc.· Dissent	9 So. 2d 366	66
1945	Gilman v. Butzloff	22 So. 2d 263	62
1925	Dale v. Jennings· Dissent	107 So. 175	60
1939	Hall v. State· Dissent	187 So. 392	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,724 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 Rivers H. Buford on?: Rivers H. Buford 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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23 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).