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 1975 / Served to 1983

Robert P. Smith

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

Robert P. Smith was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal (102 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1975–1983 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 38 published opinions for the court (1978), plus 5 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Fiat Motors of North America, Inc. v. Calvin (14 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. 47 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1978	Fiat Motors of North America, Inc. v. Calvin†	356 So. 2d 908	14
1978	State Department of Health & Rehabilitative Services v. Barr†	359 So. 2d 503	11
1978	School Board of Palm Beach County v. Florida Public Employees Relations Commission· Dissent†	374 So. 2d 527	6
1978	Jacobs v. Becks· Dissent†	355 So. 2d 1241	5
1978	Prohaska v. Bison Co.· Concurrence†	365 So. 2d 794	4
1978	Harmon v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Services†	364 So. 2d 788	4
1978	J. N. W. v. State†	361 So. 2d 826	4
1978	First National Bank of Miramar v. Lewis†	355 So. 2d 869	4
1978	Roe v. Macy†	363 So. 2d 616	3
1978	Continental Ins. Co. v. Belflower†	355 So. 2d 840	3
1978	Owens v. State†	361 So. 2d 224	2
1978	Blowers v. Williams†	360 So. 2d 1293	2
1978	Wright v. Wainwright†	359 So. 2d 11	2
1978	City of Pensacola v. Florida Public Employees Relations Commission†	358 So. 2d 589	2
1978	Allen v. Scott†	358 So. 2d 1112	2

Showing the 15 most-cited of 47 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 was Robert P. Smith on?: Robert P. Smith was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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8 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).