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 1994 / Active

Robert T. Benton II

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Robert T. Benton II is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: Since 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Benton authored 589 published opinions for the court (1994–2016), plus 76 dissents and 80 concurrences. Most cited: Van Wagner v. State (68 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. 395 of these were attributed to Benton 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
1996	Van Wagner v. State	677 So. 2d 314	68
1994	Jacksonville v. NAEGELE OUTDOOR ADV.	634 So. 2d 750	67
2013	Walton v. State· Concurrence†	106 So. 3d 522	63
2005	Gray v. State	910 So. 2d 867	50
1995	State v. Setzler	667 So. 2d 343	47
2014	Kiefert v. Nationstar Mortgage, LLC†	153 So. 3d 351	42
2001	City of Gainesville v. STATE, DOT	778 So. 2d 519	42
2000	Colony Ins. Co. v. G & E TIRES & SERVICE, INCORPORATED	777 So. 2d 1034	38
2001	First Union Nat. Bank v. Turney	824 So. 2d 172	37
1997	Hill v. Division of Retirement	687 So. 2d 1376	36
2013	Castellanos v. Next Door Co.†	124 So. 3d 392	33
2005	N.B. v. State†	911 So. 2d 833	33
1997	Palm Springs General Hosp. v. Cabrera	698 So. 2d 1352	33
2013	Falcon v. State· Concurrence†	111 So. 3d 973	30
2003	Bennett's Leasing, Inc. v. First Street Mortgage Corp.	870 So. 2d 93	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 747 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 is Robert T. Benton II on?: Robert T. Benton II is a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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32 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).